In India, the land of farmers, where agriculture has always been the primary occupation of the people, more than 50% of the population is still engaged in agriculture and its allied sectors. However, over the years, a significant decline has been observed in the contribution by the agriculture sector towards India's GDP. This chapter aimed towards identifying the gap between the ratio of high inputs and low yields by portraying the various limitations in traditional Indian agriculture methods and how hydroponic agriculture is the need of the hour for the growth of Indian agriculture. Hydroponic agriculture or hydroponics, around the world, has proved to be an efficient and more productive method of agriculture than geoponics (i.e., the traditional agriculture practice carried out in the soil). Although bearing a large bouquet of advantages, there are some limitations associated with it as well. This chapter aimed at overcoming these limitations to enhance this novel approach of agriculture even further.
TopIntroduction
Hydroponics, or hydroponic agriculture (Pal, 2016), is the practice of growing crops in a solution medium. The solution generally consists of water-based solvent with minerals, nutrients, and other organic components dissolved in it to support plant growth. Unlike traditional farming culture, hydroponics does not involve the use of soil, sand, gravel, and other similar mediums. Since, the nutrients and minerals are readily available for absorption by plants, the crop growth and yield are much higher compared to soil-based farming. Also, this method does not promote the use of commercial chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Rather, organic household and farm waste are used to maintain the nutrient balance of the solution. This organic approach gives the crops higher nutrition values. Hydroponics is also referred to as controlled environment agriculture (CEA), as it involves a very close monitoring of the environment aspects like pH and nutrient-levels of the solution, temperature, light, etc.
In traditional agriculture methodology i.e., the geoponics, the soil is the binding agent, which is used to hold and support the roots of the plant, so that the plant remains stable and firm. It entraps the water along with the dissolved minerals and nutrients between its particles so that the plant can absorb them through the process of translocation. Though the soil is the primary factor in the traditional agriculture, there are various problems associated with it, some of which are: infertility of soil, soil erosion accelerated by various factors, the existence of harmful pests affecting the growth of the plant, unwanted weeds that grow in the soil, and so on. Hydroponics, on the other hand, is the solution of most of the problems associated with the ongoing approach of agriculture. In hydroponics, the soil is replaced by water, and the entire farm is shifted from agricultural land to indoor grow-rooms, designed strategically for the purpose. Normally the grow-rooms are designed using PVC pipes which provide a channel for the water-based solution to be circulated in the setup. These pipes have holes carved into them, to hold the plants at equal distances. This method is called nutrient-film technique (NFT). Although there are other approaches as well, like static solution culture which uses rectangular tanks, NFT is the most preferred implementation of hydroponic agriculture.
Researchers and innovators around the world are trying to technically enhance the hydroponics methodology to enhance the yields further. For this, smart and sophisticated “grow-rooms” have been proposed and designed by integrating IT domain to this agriculture sector. Further, specialized hardware modules, wireless sensor networks, IoT applications, etc. have been proposed and developed to remotely monitor and control the setup and its environment to optimize the crop-growth and reduce manual labour requirements.
TopBackground
India is still chiefly an agrarian-based economy. Agriculture has been the primary occupation of Indian people since ancient times. However, this sector has not seen significant advancements on a very large scale. The technological advancements that have taken place in this sector are fairly less and the number of farmers aware and using these technologies is even lesser. Despite huge demand, farmers in India are not able to generate enough income for themselves. The crops are regularly marred by climatic factors, inadequate or over-irrigation, pest infestations, overuse of chemical fertilizers, etc. Though agriculture forms the backbone of Indian economy, its contribution to the GDP has been on a steep decline in the post-independence period, being 45.48% in FY 1950-51 to just 15.87% in FY 2018-19 which is clearly depicted in fig. 2. Moreover, the crop yields do not show any evident increase and sometimes it fails to even maintain a consistent graph in spite of the hard work put in by the farmers and plans introduced by the government. This is clearly shown by fig. 3.