Justification of Optimal Parameters for a Batch-Type Hydroponic System

Abstract

Ensuring that people have access to a balanced diet that meets their daily caloric needs is the foundation of food security both in Ukraine and around the world. As the full-scale war has significantly exacerbated the global food crisis, the traditional agricultural sector has faced unprecedented challenges. This is forcing us to rethink our approaches to food production and turn our attention to innovative closed agricultural systems, particularly vertical farming, as a tool for local and independent production. In a sense, vertical farming represents a breakthrough in agricultural production, eliminating problems such as soil scarcity and water shortages caused by changing climatic conditions. And it is hydroponics – where plants are grown in a nutrient solution in water instead of soil – that is the technological system capable of solving the problem of soil scarcity, ensuring a year-round supply of vegetables to the market, and, more broadly, ensuring the country’s food security.

The aim of this study is to select the optimal parameters for a portable hydroponic system using intermittent flooding and the corresponding plant cultivation technology, which will increase plant productivity through the use of phytomatrices with varying ratios of red to blue light components, different densities of photosynthetic photon flux, and the use of a nutrient solution based on biological preparations.

To optimize the efficiency of growing vegetable and berry crops, the design of the experimental portable flood-and-drain system was improved with an enhanced integrated artificial lighting system based on specialized phytomatrices. The proposed technological solutions in the modernized portable hydroponic system for periodic flooding make it possible, when growing basil, to optimize the initial conditions for vegetation and increase seed germination energy and the accumulation of plant green mass, reduce the duration of plant maturation, and intensify leaf mass growth. The selection of optimal lighting contributes to more stable photosynthesis under the established microclimate conditions inside the system.

Thus, after analyzing the statistical data from the experimental studies, it can be concluded that when growing basil plants in a modernized portable intermittent-flooding hydroponic system to achieve stable photosynthesis without leaf scorch and acceptable microclimate conditions inside the system, the optimal ratio of red to blue light sources ranges from 1:6 to 1:8 units in phytomatrices. Furthermore, the optimal range for photosynthetic photon flux density (light intensity) is between 250 μmol/m²/s and 270 μmol/m²/s, which is the most effective.