Irrigation of Celery (Apium Graveolens) Plants with Aquaculture Effluent AQE Using Hydroponic System and Surface Drip Irrigation

Abstract

Aquaculture is fish farming that consist as one of the major fish productions, its basic farming in water. The discharge of aquaculture effluent is a main disadvantage of aquaculture farming. The aim of this work to investigated the effect of using AQE in irrigation of Celery (Apium graveolens) plants using hydroponic or aquaponic and surface drip irrigation system. The benefit of aquaculture effluent will help in protecting the environment and useful in irrigation a new product. Aquaculture bowel pool installed at Al-Quds University campus, its integrated with two system hydroponic and surface drip irrigation to investigation the effect of AQE irrigation in Celery (Apium graveolens) plants. The plant growth parameters (plant height, fresh and dry weight and both dry leaves and stems) for both surface drip irrigation and hydroponic systems demonstrated there are no significant difference between irrigation with FW and AQE. Further, the plant tissue analysis of Celery leaves and stems revealed no influence in irrigation with AQE as compared to FW. In addition, no accumulation of sodium or chloride ions in the plant tissues was detected showing no effect of both ions in plants. The results show that the growth parameters, the chemical and physical characteristics of the plant in the aquaponics water effluent AQE pipes are similar to those grown in FW. Furthermore, water characteristics of AQE and FW with commercial fertilizers (13 N:13 P:13 K) during the growing the season and at the end of season shows approximately the same characteristics. Thus, the irrigation with AQE will be same effect of using commercial fertilizer system in both surface drip irrigation of hydroponic system or aquaponic for Celery plants. The combination of surface drip irrigation process and hydroponic system with aquaculture system is useful technique to benefits from the application of AQE in irrigation. This irrigation method is considered to be cheap in construction, easy operation, a long lifespan and needs low maintenance requirements.