Saturday, February 12, 2011

Learning About Hydroponics

It might surprise you to know that you can grow plants without soil. This technique of cultivating plants sans soil is called hydroponics. Even a couple of centuries ago researches revealed that plants take up vital mineral nutrients that are dissolved in water, and available for them in ionic form. Soil simply holds this water as a reservoir.

Soil particles themselves are not used by the plants, and are not needed for their growth. The roots of plants take up the water with the dissolved minerals. Thus, it is possible to provide the plants with the required minerals dissolved in water without the soil.

This led to the development of the technique known as hydroponics where soil is not used and nutrients for plant growth are provided in the form of an aqueous solution. The term ‘hydroponics’ is derived from Greek two words, namely ‘hydo’, meaning water, and ‘ponos’, meaning labor. As already mentioned, no soil is used when plants are grown by this method.

The required nutrients are provided dissolved in water. It is possible to grow plants in water containing dissolved nutrients, with roots dipping in this medium without any solid components. Or, the mineral solution may contain gravel, mineral wool or coconut fibers, and thus provide a still medium.

Hydroponics is also taught as a typical system in biology. Recently, hydroponics has become very popular. The advantage of this method is that no soil is required for food production. A case in point for the support and success of hydroponics is Wake Island which is refuelling halt for Pan American Airlines. Wake Island is an atoll in the Pacific Ocean, with an entirely rocky terrain and no soil.

This made it impossible to grow vegetables on the island. For the air lines, importing vegetables for its passengers was costly. In the 1930s hydroponics was tried out here and was found to be very successive. Pan Am was able to grow vegetables on the island, no longer needed to import them.

It would seem that hydroponics was waiting to happen in Wake Island and save the airlines a great deal of money! In addition to not requiring soil, hydroponics has another significant advantage.

Since the water used can be recycled, fresh supplies of water is not required. This not only cuts the cost on water requirements, it also reduces the cost of nutrition requirement since it is possible to control nutrient levels.

Since nutrient availability in the water is strictly controlled there is no release of excess nutrients into nature and polluting water bodies. Hydroponics is, therefore, a cost effective and environmentally friendly system for growing plants. Studies have shown very clearly, that hydroponics is very productive, giving high yields.

Because hydroponics is also a stable system it is followed all over the world. Furthermore, it has been found that it is possible to control pests and diseases in plants grown using hydroponics. This is because the containers are movable, something that cannot be done with plants grown on farmland.

Right now, hydroponics is established as a branch of agronomy. This method has improved very quickly. We see from the results obtained in different countries that use this method is that hydroponics is very effective and has many significant advantages over conventional agricultural practices.

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