Eco Sustainable Village

IHC 291- CIPS

Plant-Control of Fertilizer and Water Movement

James L. Green, Bryan Blackburn, Shaun Kelly, and Mohammed Albahou

Department of Horticulture, Oregon State University, Corvallis. OR 97331-7304, USA

What is CIPS?

CIPS is a box enclosing the plants’ root systems. The plant’s shoot extends through a seal in the lid. In the root medium within the closed protective box, capillary water movement upward from the water reservoir is plant-driven. Fertilizer diffuses from the fertilizer reservoir within a protected diffusion zone (PDZ).

There is no waste effluent. There is no recycling. Sufficient water and fertilizer for one or more years may be placed initially in the respective CIPS reservoirs. CIPS may be a single or multiple plant system.

Plants from 47 families, 92 genera, have been grown individually and together - - - sharing a common water reservoir in the base of the CIPS and a common fertilizer reservoir at the top of the pouched medium.
	Alternate form of CIPS - The opaque, insulated, moisture impermeable picnic cooler.
Three Japanese maple trees, each in its individual sealed pouch-basket under a common lid, share a water reservoir in the base of the enclosing sealing container.

FLOATING PLANT RAFT

Plant rafts with newly planted pouches float to and from work and production areas via 'end troughs'. As new rafts 'float' into trough, rafts with mature plants 'float' out of trough and return to the work/shipping area. "End gates" at either end of the production trough are hinged on the end distal from the work area; the gates are opened to direct and 'float' the plant rafts to and from the production trough and work area. During the rain season, precipitation drains from plant rafts into the underlying 'production trough'. During rains, excess precipitation overflows the trough 'endgates' into the end troughs to the collection reservoir.


This 32 cm thick styrofoam 'plant raft' can support 100 kg with a draw of 13 cm.

For production in the ‘Floating Plant Raft System’ determinant, green-shouldered, concentrated fruit set Tomatoes produce a wall-to-wall horizontal plant canopy for efficient supplementary lighting and eight, mature fruit for one-time harvest by day 120.

DUAL POUCH- 'Smart' Plant

'Smart Plant' System . . . Plant Controlled Water and Fertilizer Movement & Uptake

	Plant-Controlled Fertilizer Solubilization and Uptake. An 'infinite' reservoir of fertilizer can be placed in a non-irrigated fertilizer pouch. Water will be transferred across an air gap from roots in the capillary irrigated pouch to roots in the fertilizer pouch. Water will be discharged from these roots to solubilize the fertilizer for uptake.
	Plant-controlled water and fertilizer uptake!

Dual Pouches: The root system of each plant was divided with half of the roots in the fertilizer-media in the water impermeable plastic bag on the right; the other half were in the light blue, copper coated, water permeable pouch on the left.
	Water uptake in the left pouch; water exuded from root to dissolve fertilizer in the right pouch for uptake.

Biodesalinating Companion Plant -

Suaeda salsa, a halophyte that removes sodium from the rootzone and deposits it in the foliage, decreased the sodium concentration in the root media by 50 percent or greater (91.8 meq Na/100 g of media with S. salsa and 186.8 meq Na/100 g of media without S. salsa). With S. salsa as a bio-desalinating companion plant with tomato, the media salinity was 31 percent lower (43.4 dS/m without S. salsa and 29.9 dS/m with S. salsa).

A Suaeda salsa plant growing in the same pouch with a tomato plant (with capillary subirrigation with saline water in CIPS) decreased salt accumulation in the root media by 50%.

Suaeda salsa

Suaeda Graph

Tomato blossom end rot (BER) in CIPS

	Genotype: The factor having the greatest incidence (%BER) and the greatest range was genotype. The greatest %BER occurred with tomato cultivars with homozygous, uu, geno-type with 'uniform' pigmented fruit (24% BER); the least incidence of BER occurred with the UU, 'green shouldered', genotypes (5% BER).
	Salinity: %BER of susceptible cultivars (uu) decreased with increased salinity (mg/l NaCl) in the irrigation water in CIPS decreasing from 17.7% BER at 0 mg/l NaCl to 5.4% BER at 10,000 mg/l NaCl.
	Nitrogen Form: Providing half of the nitrogen equivalents as ammonium resulted in 16% BER incidence on susceptible cultivars (uu cultivars) compared with 11% BER on nitrate-fertilized tomatoes.

Santium not susceptible to BER

'Santium' (left) is an example of a 'green shouldered' (U-genotype) tomato cultivar that is not susceptible to BER.

BER graph

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