Sustainable Soilless Cultivation Mode: Cultivation Study on Droplet Settlement of Plant Roots under Ultrasonic Aeroponic Cultivation

Abstract

In order to solve the effects of environmental factors on the droplet settlement of a nutrient solution on plant roots when planting plants with ultrasonic aeroponic cultivation, this study aimed to obtain a suitable wind speed range and atomization time through a nutrient solution atomization experiment, to obtain the best control scheme through a multi-environmental parameter combination cultivation experiment. Taking an ultrasonic aeroponic cultivation device as the research object, and lettuce as the test material, experiments were carried out on two factors affecting the wind speed of an axial fan and the atomization time of the nutrient amount of ultrasonic aeroponic cultivation plants; the suitable wind speed range was 1.0–2.5 m/s. The temperatures of the lettuce root zones in the upper, middle, and lower layers of the ultrasonic aeroponic cultivation device at different time periods were obtained by atomizing the nutrient solution. When the optimum temperature for the root growth of lettuce was 15–20 °C and the wind speed was 1.0–2.5 m/s, the continuous atomization time of the nutrient solution was 66–184 min. Using a quadratic orthogonal rotation combination design method, three main factors, namely wind speed, ambient temperature, and atomization time, were selected to test droplet settlement in the lettuce roots. The droplet settlement in the lettuce root system was measured. The droplet settlement regression equation in the lettuce root system was established. The reliability of the regression model was tested according to the significance condition, and a simplified quadratic orthogonal regression equation was obtained. The main effect analysis, single factor analysis, and interaction effect analysis were used to analyze the model, and the model was further verified. The verification results showed that the relative error between the predicted value and the actual value of the average root droplet sedimentation was 5.8%. The optimum wind speed was 2.5 m/s, the ambient temperature was 16 °C, and the atomization time was 184 min when the ultrasonic aeroponic cultivation device designed in this study was used to cultivate lettuce. It could provide a theoretical reference and an experimental basis for the control of the related growth environment parameters of plants cultivated using ultrasonic aeroponic cultivation.