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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Crop and Product Physiology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1469434
This article is part of the Research Topic Optimizing Fertilizer and Irrigation for Specialty Crops Using Precision Agriculture Technologies View all 5 articles

Sensor-controlled fertigation management for higher yield and quality in greenhouse hydroponic strawberries

Provisionally accepted
George Kerrigan Hutchinson George Kerrigan Hutchinson 1Lan Xuan Nguyen Lan Xuan Nguyen 1Zilfina Rubio Ames Zilfina Rubio Ames 1Krishna Nemali Krishna Nemali 2Rhuanito Soranz Ferrarezi Rhuanito Soranz Ferrarezi 1*
  • 1 University of Georgia, Athens, United States
  • 2 Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) for strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa) production has experienced a growth in popularity in recent years, particularly in North America. One of the most common growing systems in CEA strawberry production is the soilless hydroponic system, which uses an inert substrate and nutrient solution to grow the plants. There are several strategies for water management in substrates, and most are based on a rigid schedule rather than variable plant water requirements over time. Comprehensive comparisons among the different strategies are lacking because they are often associated with complicated evapotranspiration models. The use of soil moisture sensors coupled with automated controllers that apply water when the substrate moisture drops below a set threshold is stills not widely used. This study aimed to apply various fertigation management strategies and, considering both yield and resource use, determine the optimal one for two newly released strawberry cultivars. ‘Florida Brilliance’ and ‘Florida Beauty’ were grown in a greenhouse hydroponic system under six different fertigation management strategies: one timer-based, one leaching fraction-based, and four sensor-based strategies that each automatically applied nutrient solution to maintain a constant volumetric water content threshold (0.36, 0.30, 0.225, or 0.15 m3∙m-3). Yield and resource use were quantified during the 129-day experiment, and plants were harvested at the end of the experiment to measure biomass and foliar nutrients. The yield was then used to calculate the water (WUE) and energy (EUE) use efficiencies for each strategy. Considering yield and resource use efficiencies, the two drier constant volumetric water content thresholds (0.225 and 0.15 m3∙m-3) and the leaching fraction-based strategy had optimal performance. The results of this experiment can aid growers in employing more efficient fertigation management strategies to increase crop quality and reduce resource use for CEA strawberry production.

    Keywords: Fragaria × ananassa, Volumetric water content, Energy use efficiency, Water use efficiency, substrate, frequency domain reflectometry, Capacitance sensor

    Received: 23 Jul 2024; Accepted: 17 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Hutchinson, Nguyen, Ames, Nemali and Ferrarezi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Rhuanito Soranz Ferrarezi, University of Georgia, Athens, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.