Assessment of growth rates of hydroponic and soil based tomatoes

Abstract

As the world population grows, the demand for vegetables increases tomatoes as they are the most consumed. Because of this growing demand, there will be an expected food crisis in the near future if production is not increased. To prevent that crisis from happening, other methods of farming must be adopted. This report studied and assessed two farming systems to compare and find the best system that will cover the current and future demand with the least method of environmental degradation. The first system is the soil-based system (traditional), and the other is the hydroponic system. Tomatoes were used to study the differences. Over a period of elven weeks, the heights of the plants for both systems were measured. After collecting data, the data were analysed using GenStat and the variance test (ANOVA). The hypothesis of the test is the ‘The growth rate of plants in soil and hydroponics is equal’. The experiment resulted in that the hydroponic tomatoes equalled or was better than the soil system. The hydroponic system has a higher growth rate. This result achieves the aim of this paper which is finding a planting system that can increase the productivity to cover the food demand.