Lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) Production in Republic of Congo Using Hydroponic System

Hydroponic is a subset of hydroculture, which is a method of growing plants without soil by instead using mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent. The study aimed to assess the behavior of Minetto and Blonde de Paris varieties of Lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) in hydroculture. The experiments tanks have been installed in Talanga？ Micro-garden site, located in Kimbanguiste Church at Brazzaville. The lettuce seeds were sown in a nursery tank, and then transplanted into 4 hydroponic production tanks, at the rate of 2 tanks per variety, with 20 stems per tank. Each tank has a volume of 62 l. During the 47 days of the lettuce evolutionary cycle in the production tanks, nutrient solutions were provided in two phases, namely the post-nursery and full production. About the post-nursery, 868 ml were added, i.e. 620 ml for the macro solution and 248 ml for the micro solution. With regard to full production, there was an addition of 2430.4 ml, at the rate of 1736 ml for the macro solution and 694.4 ml for the micro solution. Statistical analysis has been made using SPSS v.18.0 and SigmaPlot v.10.0 softwares. Separations were performed by Duncan’s multiple range tests. Differences at P < 0.05 were considered to be significant. The results showed that the total production was a biomass of 12 kg, i.e. 7.6 kg for Minetto and 4.4 kg for Blonde de Paris. This study allowed us to find that Minetto fared better compared to Blonde de Paris concerning the quantitative and qualitative production of the vegetable.