Hydroponic production of the medicinal plants Artemisia ludoviciana and Tradescantia zebrina under greenhouse conditions

Abstract

The use of medicinal plants for the treatment of chronic-degenerative diseases is an attractive alternative to traditional pharmaceutical drugs, the supply of this type of plants is given in most cases by harvesting in the wild. Hence, the information available on hydroponic production for these plant inputs is still scarce. Therefore, the objective was to evaluate the growth of estafiate (Artemisia ludoviciana ) and chicken grass (Tradescantia zebrina ) produced hydroponically under greenhouse conditions. For which a treatment and a control were managed, the first by means of hydroponics (inorganic substrate and nutritive solution) and the second was the control by means of conventional production (organic substrate without nutritive solution). The experimental design was completely randomized with five replications per treatment. It was statistically demonstrated that hydroponic production positively affected plant growth. In estafiate the height increased by 31.4%, while for the chicken grass this increase was 28% with respect to the control, the variables of dry and fresh weight followed a similar trend, being favored by the hydroponic treatment with respect to the control.