Evaluation of the cultivation of hydroponic lettuce (lactuca sativa l.) In floating root under different nutritional solutions

Abstract

The Santa Elena Peninsula considered as a semi-arid zone presents difficulties in taking advantage of its climatic conditions such as water deficit, saline soils, degraded and/or polluted. Hydroponics is presented as a production alternative to this problem. Lettuce is the main hydroponic crop worldwide and nationally but due to its condition as a cold season plant it is important to evaluate its technical feasibility before recommending its use in this productive system that requires high economic investment. The objective of this research was to evaluate the agronomic behavior of a protected crop of hydroponic lettuce cv. Crespa subjected to three nutritive solutions: Hoagland / Arnon, Sonneveld / Voogt and Steiner, with four replications and 20 plants per experimental unit, on average of all the crops grown. The crop was repeated four times between the months of January to May of 2018 to determine the consistency of the data. The plantation of lettuce was carried out under the floating root system in quincunx with a distance of 0.2 x 0.17 m between plants. The treatments were distributed under a randomized complete block design, for the evaluation of means, the Tukey test was used at 95% confidence. The variables evaluated were: number and length of leaves, weight and height of the plant, root length, fresh and dry weight of the area and radicular part and percentage of dry matter. The results indicate that under the three levels of fertilization, as an average of the four seasons of planting, the plants reached an average of 131.8 g below the 150 g considered the commercial weight. However, the fertilizer formulation Hoagland and Arnon achieved the best results in all the variables evaluated with 142.8 g plant-1, 23 plant-1 leaves, 22.2 cm leaf length, 6.77% and 4.88% of foliar and radicular dry matter. This fertilizer solution was profiled as the most appropriate, within the four seasons evaluated, for the cultivation of hydroponic lettuce under the agroclimatic conditions of the Santa Elena peninsula.