COMPARATIVE EFFICIENCIES OF HORIZONTAL VERSUS VERTICAL HYDROPONICS PLANT GROWTH SYSTEMS

 Since the topic is new, research was done to better understand "Hydroponics".  Sharma, Nisha & Acharya, Somen & Kumar, Kaushal & Singh, Narendra & Chaurasia, Om. (2019). Hydroponics as an advanced technique for vegetable production: An overview. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation.  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330080392_Hydroponics_as_an_advanced_technique_for_vegetable_production_An_overview According to this patent, hydroponics is a method of growing plants in nutrient solutions with or without the use of an inert medium to offer mechanical support, such as gravel, vermiculite, rockwool, peat moss, saw dust, coir dust, coconut fibre, and so on. Hydroponics is derived from the Greek terms hydro, which means water, and ponos, which means labor, and literally translates to "water work." Professor William Gericke invented the term hydroponics to describe growing plants with their roots floating in water containing mineral fertilizers i...

 Topic: Comparative efficiencies of horizontal versus vertical hydroponics plant growth system. Type of project: Design, build and test.  Since this project is design, build and test, one standard horizontal system will be compared to by a selected designed vertical system. Thus, three conceptual designs must be analyzed and one design must be chosen.  Comparative- Both system must be designed to test the same number of growing slots, types of crops, tested under the same environmental conditions and same nutrient water so that they can be compared equally.  Efficiencies- Test the quality of the plants grown by both system.  Define horizontal and vertical systems.

 I have been assigned the project titled "Comparative Efficiencies of Horizontal versus Vertical Hydroponics Plant Growth Systems". This project was my first choice. I choose this project because of the unavailability of soil based area where I currently reside. For my family business (Indar's Fast Food), we require a lot of leafy green plants so initially I stated to plant in oil kegs on my roof. This became difficult to maintain due to heat, hydroponics was intriguing to me since it reduces the amount of work needed to caretake for these crops and the significant difference between soilless and soil grown planting. This being said hydroponics is a totally new hobby and very excited to study.  For this project, the goal is to have a better understanding of both systems and be able to obtain their efficiencies by testing under the same conditions.