Hydroponics
Hydroponics is a type of horticulture and a subset of hydroculture that involves growing plants, usually crops or medicinal plants, without soil, by using water-based mineral nutrient solutions in aqueous solvents.
Simply, hydroponics, a method of growing plants in a water and nutrient solution, without soil, allows crop production with less area, inputs, labor, and time required. This technique can be used best in urban areas (vertical farming) where space is a constraint and demand for fresh vegetables exists year-round.
Agricultural productivity and sustainability are challenges faced by growers due to shortage of fresh water, contaminated soil, cost of fossil fuels to power machinery and for transportation, with relatively small marginal returns, and decreasing arable land area, to be considered important reasons to go for hydroponic.
We offer hydroponic education material and training with a focus on Plant Mineral Nutrition as a key aspect of plant production and management, so investors and students can gain an understanding of how plants acquire and transport nutrient elements and how each “essential” element functions in plant physiology.
The course focuses on hydroponics practical aspects of nutrient sufficiency- deficiency, and their management aspects in horticulture and field crop production and landscape maintenance.
The course can be integrated with transparent tubes pushed diagonally in the soil beneath roots up to 3 ft. and process plant roots ImageJ screening technique to measure and assess their establishment and proliferation to determine their temporal and spatial distribution in a heterogeneous matrix of soils and thus the ability of plant roots to obtain mobile and immobile resources.
Our experience in the controlled environment agriculture (CEA) industry which includes greenhouses and indoor farms goes back 25 years ago and enabled us to continue practicing and teaching hydroponics courses at the international level, including our teaching courses at Michigan State University-Horticulture (2DL Plant Mineral Nutrition HRT 205).