Microbial consortia effects on the yields of water spinach in milkfish aquaponics system

Abstract

Aquaponics is a technology combining fish, plants, and microorganisms into one system. In order to better understanding concerning the role of microorganism upon plant growth, this research was focused on the effect of microbial consortia inoculation on the yield of hydroponically water spinach (Ipomea aquatica Forssk) integrated with milk fish (Chanos chanos). The plant growth quality were determined to assess the efficacy of the beneficial microorganism. The experimental design was randomized blocks with five treatments which corresponded to the microbial consortia inoculation containing species of Lactobacillus, species of Bacillus, species of Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter and combination of Lactobacillus casei and Saccharomyces cerevisae with three replicates. The result indicated that the water spinach with microbial consortia inoculation higher growth and yields than that of the uninoculated control significantly. However, it was not significantly different on plant yields from the species composition of microbial consortia. The results support the hypothesis that the use of microbial consortia can increase the yields efficiency of aquaponically water spinach. In interesting implication of result findings was that in the aquaponics system, the milk fish can be coupled with the water spinach growing system since its benefits were not dependent upon continuous recirculation between the plant and fish system but also its living biotic community.