Effect of hydroponically grown substrates on fodder production under protected environment
Paper Details
Effect of hydroponically grown substrates on fodder production under protected environment
Abstract
Fodder plays an important role in livestock feed to providing required nutrients for milk and meat production. Mostly wheat-grass is cultivated for its seeds, a cereal grain worldwide used as staple food. In Pakistan year-round fodder availability is very important especially in slack period. Hydroponic is an improved method to grow wheat-fodder without soil by using nutrients water in soilless substrate. The process of growing wheat-fodder hydroponically allows the control of climatic conditions for optimum growth. In hydroponics agriculture, only two weeks are required for the production of wheat-grass due its fast growing habit under protected environment. Keeping in view the importance of fodder, an experiment was conducted at Hydroponic Research Station Rawat, Institute of Hydroponic Agriculture (IHA), PMAS Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi. Nine plastic trays (0.3×0.15×0.076 m) were selected in the experiment with three different types of substrates i.e. coco, pasteurized soil and sand were used to grow wheat-fodder. One plants cluster was selected from each tray and data recorded for various crop growth parameters like germination rate, cluster height, number of tillers, root length, fresh weight and dry weight was statistical analyzed by using Complete Randomized Design (CRD). It was concluded from the study that coco proved to be a better substrate as compared to sand and pasteurized soil.
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