Abstract
Because of exploding population and declining natural resources, innovative approaches are desired in agriculture to feed billions of hungry mouths. Hydroponic farming provides an opportunity for manifold production from limited land and water resources. Affluent nations have developed multi-storied hydroponic greenhouses that are beyond the capacity of resourceconstrained Pakistan farmers. This demanded the development, manufacture, installation, and testing of indigenously designed greenhouses under various locations of Punjab Pakistan. Indigenously developed hydroponic greenhouses were installed at Faisalabad, Lahore, and Multan to examine their technical feasibility. Indigenous hydroponic greenhouse, measuring 30.5 m × 30.5 m with a gable height of 4.26 m, clad with 200 micron UV-stabilized plastic film overlapped with insect-net (40 mesh size), was developed and tested for maintaining temperature and humidity inside the greenhouse at various locations in PunjabPakistan. The temperature ranged from 21.6-29.5°C and humidity from 54.6-74.0% in two years of experimentation. The ranges were within the permissible limits for growing vegetables hydroponically. Crop growth parameters including plant height, cluster to cluster distance, and fruit yield were similar at various sites of the experiments suggesting the validity of shed design for various regions of Punjab. The average tomato yield remained 47-69 tons/acre (116-170.4 tons/ha) from the hydroponic unit during 2017-18 and 2018-19 as against 5-10 tons/acre in soil-based tunnel farming.
Ahmad Waqas, Muhammad Umair, Rai Niaz Ahmad. (2021) ASSESSMENT OF CROP RESPONSES AND CLIMATIC PARAMETERS BY DEVELOPING INDIGENOUS HYDROPONIC GREENHOUSES IN DIFFERENT REGIONS OF PUNJAB-PAKISTAN, Pakistan Journal of Agricultural Sciences, Volume 58, Issue 2.
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