Approximate climate analysis for assessing the suitability of Indian climate zones for hydroponic fodder applications

Abstract

Hydroponic fodder has been proposed as a novel low-tech solution to India’s fodder scarcity. Hydroponic fodder can reduce water requirements by up to 95% and use up to 70% less land due to their vertically scalable nature. The short crop cycles of approximately 7 days yields a seed to feed ratio of 1:8. This study analyses the external environmental weather conditions in Indian climate zones, assessing their suitability for the application of hydroponic fodder solutions. The weather of each climate zone was approximated by a representative city through parameter selection and optimisation by three-dimensional Euclidean distance minimisation. Simulation and analysis were carried out on the Rhinoceros software platform with the Grasshopper and LadyBug plug-ins. Hourly temperature plots, sun-path diagrams and psychrometric charts with modified predicted mean vote polygons superimposed were generated for each climate zone. The ambient weather suitability of the following representative cities was simulated to be as follows: Ahmedabad (86.70%), Kolkata (81.86%), Bengaluru (94.07%), Lucknow (73.23%) and Srinagar (30.85%). A cost benefit analysis was buttressed by a sensitivity analysis with respect to the selling price of green fodder. A preliminary cash flow analysis yielded a discounted payback period of 4 months for direct fodder sales and 20 months for sale of livestock products as a co-benefit of green fodder production.