Published in Scientific Papers. Series E. Land Reclamation, Earth Observation & Surveying, Environmental Engineering, Vol. V
Written by Murat YILDIRIM, Alper DARDENIZ, Seckin KAYA, Baboo ALI
In Turkey, the demand of table grapevine rootstocks is increasing day by day since the value of table grapevine rootstocks increase. On the other hand, production of table grapevine does not meet the demands of market since grapevine rootstock production efficiency is low. So, its production efficiency must be increased. Nowadays, hydroponics system is becoming a quite common and alternative method as compared to traditional farming systems of cultivation of soil, because hydroponics systems offer a wide range of advantages such as high capacity of production, high quality of products and also reduce the use of pesticides as compared to the traditional methods of cultivation. Grapevine variety namely, Yalova Cekirdeksizi has been taken in summer growing season and used its green cuttings as living material in this research work. The obtained cuttings were transplanted to different pots in three different time periods (15th of June, July and August in the year 2015). Grapevine rootstocks were placed to the pots having the dimension of 22 cm in width, 72 cm in length and 17 cm in depth. Each pot in the experiment possessed the same amount of fertilizer and the drip irrigation system has been applied. A microcontroller (PIC16F84) device has been used as an automated controller for supplying the water to the experimental trials. The irrigation system has been comprised with three main parts i.e., submersible pump, power suppliers (12 volt DC) and some other connected apparatus. In this experiment, a time based closed loop hydroponics system has been used aimed to test the performance of the automated hydroponics system for the growth of grapevine rootstocks. Consequently, the system took over the all irrigation procedures successfully throughout the entire growing season.
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