Advances in Knowledge of Hydroponic and Aquaponic Systems
A special issue of Horticulturae (ISSN 2311-7524). This special issue belongs to the section "Protected Culture".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2019) | Viewed by 74711
Special Issue Editors
Interests: controlled environment agriculture; recirculating aquaculture systems; entrepreneurship; renewable energy systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: reducing energy use in CEA; LED lighting; climate control; mineral nutrition; new crops
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: aquaculture engineering; sustainable aquaculture; coastal bioengineering; aquaponics; automation and control in aquatic systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Hydroponics is a soilless culture of plants in nutrient solution that contains ions of all of the necessary elements for healthy plant growth. Major hydroponic production systems generally can be classified as nutrient film technique (NFT); deep-water culture (DWC) or raft; and soilless substrates/media beds such as rockwool and coconut slabs, hydroton beads, etc. Hydroponics is an increasingly important field due to its increased nutrient-, water-, and space-use efficiencies and is frequently used commercially in modified- and controlled- environment agriculture to produce high-nutrient-density crops (fruits and vegetables).
Aquaponics combines hydroponics and fish aquaculture. Aquaponic farming is quickly becoming a critical part of the local food production equation. Aquaponics is the combined culture of fish and plants in the same or connected systems, where un-assimilated nutrients in the fish feed provide the nutrients needed by the plants. We must learn to grow more food with less water and grow our food closer to the consumer if we want to create a more sustainable future. Although hydroponics and aquaponics have been practiced for centuries, we are still discovering new techniques and attaining a more complete understanding of how plants function in an aquatic environment and how we can optimize their performance, particularly from an environmental sustainability perspective.
In this Special Issue, we would like to explore new horizons on how to move the hydroponics and aquaponics industries into the future to provide nutritious diets to feed the additional 2.0 billion humans being added to our current population of 7.7 billion by 2050. We also need to understand how our current systems are working. We invite manuscripts that explore any aspect of this research topic, including new technologies and growing strategies, new aquaculture products such as seaweeds or other market driven products, review papers, and traditional research papers. Topics could include nutrient and physiological plant analyses and mass balances, to analyzing financial analysis of enterprise models, and everything in between. We look forward to receiving your manuscript.
Prof. Dr. Michael Ben Timmons
Dr. Neil Mattson
Dr. Steven G. Hall
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- sustainable
- food security
- systems design
- plant physiology
- water chemistry
- mass balance
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