Abstract

Hydroponics is a new branch and aspect of food crop growing that in recent years made its mark in developing country such as Nigeria. Although, its adoption has not been too encouraging. This research work aimed at developing a drip technique system of hydroponics in determination of the agronomic parameters of cucumber by comparing the yield, water and nutrient efficiency, its consumptive use and proximate and mineral composition of cucumber. The experiment was carried out in a complete randomized design with three treatments; organic substrate (coconut coir), inorganic substrate (styrofoam) and soil. These treatments were replicated five times. The vegetative growth (agronomic parameters), yield, water and nutrient, proximate and mineral composition were measured. The result showed the consumptive use as 0.0044 m³ per day and 0.3212 m³ as the water and nutrient use efficiency. The result also showed that organic substrate gave the highest mean plant height of 736.66 mm, highest mean stem diameter of 5.79 mm and highest mean number of leaves of 9.75 while inorganic substrate gave highest mean plant height, mean stem diameter and mean number of leaves as 336.28 mm, 4.95 mm and 7.68 respectively. Also, the highest result of control (soil) gave 301.23 mm, 5.47 mm and 7.06 for the mean plant height, stem diameter and number of leaves respectively. The yield of cucumber as compared with the different growing media showed that there is no significant difference between the growing media (F_crit> F_cal) unless for the plant height and number of flowers having F_crit less than F_cal. From these results, it is advisable that drip technique system should be embraced by farmers whose primary aim of farming is for leafy vegetables and non-leafy vegetables as seen in the increase in stem diameter and plant height in the organic substrate.

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