Growth of Basil (Ocimum basilicum) in DRF, Raft, and Grow Pipes with Effluents of African Catfish (Clarias gariepinus) in Decoupled Aquaponics

Metadata

Cite key: paschGrowthBasilOcimum2021
Item type: Journal Article
Authors: Johannes Pasch, Benny Ratajczak, Samuel Appelbaum, Harry W. Palm, Ulrich Knaus
Affiliation: Department of Aquaculture and Sea-Ranching, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Science, University of Rostock, Germany (Pasch, Palm, Knaus); Tessiner Edelfisch GmbH, Selpin, Germany (Ratajczak); French Associates Institute for Agriculture and Biotechnology of Drylands, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel (Appelbaum)
Journal: AgriEngineering 3 (2021) 92-109
Date: 26 February 2021 (Received 30 January 2021; Accepted 22 February 2021; Published 26 February 2021)
Date added: 2026-08-09
DOI: 10.3390/agriengineering3010006
Funding: Ministry of Agriculture, Environment and Consumer Protection of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (Germany); European Union and EIP-AGRI operational groups (“Aquaponik in MV”, BNRZD: 13 903 000 0103; WM-EIP-0007-15); project “Performance and process water management in commercial (integrated) aquaculture systems with African catfish (Clarias gariepinus) in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania” (MV-II.1-LM-007, European Union 75%); Ph.D Scholarship Programme “Unsere Besten promovieren in Rostock”, University of Rostock; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Universitat Rostock Open Access Publishing programme
URL: https://doi.org/10.3390/agriengineering3010006
PDF: Pasch et al. - 2021 - Growth of Basil (Ocimum basilicum) in DRF, Raft, and Grow Pipes with Effluents of African Catfish (C.pdf

Opinion

A tidy, single-facility comparison of three hydroponic root-zone hardware options (DRF, raft, grow pipes) run on one shared decoupled aquaponic water source, from the same FishGlassHouse/University of Rostock group behind knausAquaponicGrowthBasil2024. The design is genuinely a three-armed AP-vs-AP-vs-AP comparison, not an AP-vs-HYD study — there is no fertilizer-based control anywhere in the paper, which the Extraction notes below treat explicitly (AP/HYD columns recorded NA, not NR). The fish side is reported honestly but awkwardly for extraction: three staggered weight classes share one pump sump feeding all three hydroponic arms, so there is no single per-trial FCR/SGR/fish-size figure, only three parallel class-level means that cannot be merged without derivation. The paper’s own headline conclusion (DRF beats raft and grow pipes on 11 of 16 growth parameters, attributed to aeroroot oxygenation at high water temperature) is well supported by Table 2’s replicated statistics. A running-text arithmetic slip (weight-class-1 tank mass given as 152.38 kg in prose vs. 152.83 kg in Table 1, the latter confirmed correct by cross-checking against the stated final mass) and an unlabelled “Total height” vs “shoot axis height” duplication are the only wrinkles found; neither affects the paper’s conclusions. The Discussion’s nutrient-deficiency accounting (N/P/K/Fe against literature-optimal hydroponic ranges) is a useful, if secondary-sourced, diagnostic for why all three arms underperformed comparable studies.

Abstract

Basil (Ocimum basilicum) was cultivated in Rostock, Northern Germany, in a decoupled aquaponic system with African catfish (Clarias gariepinus) under intensive rearing conditions by using three hydroponic components, the dynamic root floating technique (DRF), the raft technique, and grow pipes. A 25% of the recommended feed input still allowed African catfish growth and provided adequate nitrogen and calcium levels in the process water. After 36 days, the plants were examined with respect to 16 different growth parameters. DRF performed significantly better than raft and/or grow pipes in 11 parameters. Total weight of basil was significantly higher in DRF (107.70 +/- 34.03 g) compared with raft (82.02 +/- 22.74 g) and grow pipes (77.86 +/- 23.93 g). The economically important leaf biomass was significantly higher in wet and dry weight under DRF cultivation (45.36 +/- 13.53 g; 4.96 +/- 1.57 g) compared with raft (34.94 +/- 9.44 g; 3.74 +/- 1.04 g) and grow pipes (32.74 +/- 9.84 g; 3.75 +/- 1.22 g). Two main factors limited plant growth: an unbalanced nutrient concentration ratio and high water temperatures with an average of 28 degC (max 34.4 degC), which resulted in reduced root activity in raft and grow pipes. DRF was able to maintain root activity through the 5 cm air space between the shoots and the nutrient solution and thus produced significantly more biomass. This suggests DRF to be used for basil aquaponics under glass house conditions with high-temperature scenarios. Future studies are needed to optimize nutrient loads and examine systems with the plant roots exposed to air (Aeroponics).

Summary

The authors ran a 36-day decoupled aquaponics trial at the FishGlassHouse (University of Rostock), feeding untreated African catfish process water (no added fertilizer) to three parallel hydroponic subsystems — dynamic root floating technique (DRF), floating raft culture, and grow pipes — each replicated as three channels/tubes (21 basil plants/technique total), fed from one shared pump sump so all three arms received essentially identical water chemistry. Catfish were reared at 25% of the recommended feed ration across three staggered weight classes to keep water conditions stable rather than to maximize fish growth, and basil was assessed on 16 morphological growth parameters after 36 days. DRF significantly outperformed both raft and grow pipes on 11 of those 16 parameters, including total wet/dry weight, leaf mass, and shoot-axis dimensions, which the authors attribute to DRF’s characteristic 5 cm above-water air gap sustaining root/aeroroot oxygen supply once water temperatures rose above 28 degC (peaking at 34.4 degC) and suppressed root activity in the continuously-submerged raft and grow-pipe systems. Water chemistry was dominated by nitrate (NO3-N 204.47 +/- 47.98 mg/L) with comparatively adequate nitrogen and calcium but very low phosphorus, potassium and iron relative to standard hydroponic basil recipes, which the Discussion argues was a second, compounding growth-limiting factor across all three arms (with visible iron-deficiency chlorosis noted early in the trial). No hydroponic (fertilizer-based) control was run; the comparison is entirely between the three aquaponic hydroponic-hardware options. The authors conclude DRF is the preferable subsystem for basil aquaponics in temperate glasshouses during high-temperature summer periods, and recommend future work on nutrient-load optimization and root-zone aeration (including aeroponics).

Experiment data

Location: FishGlassHouse (FGH), University of Rostock, Northern Germany (latitude 54.075714, longitude 12.096591); 100 m2 greenhouse cabin (1_05) and 100 m2 intensive aquaculture unit (IAU)

Design: Single decoupled aquaponic water source (African catfish effluent, no added fertilizer) split across three hydroponic subsystem treatments — DRF, floating raft, grow pipes — each tested in triplicate channels/tubes in a completely randomized block design (CRD); no hydroponic/fertilizer control arm

Replicates / n: 3 channels/tubes per technique (true experimental unit; 7 plants/channel pooled for a Table 2 statistical n=21/technique)

Duration: 36 days (18 June-23 July 2019), fish and plant cycles coincide

Organisms: Basil (Ocimum basilicum) / African catfish (Clarias gariepinus)

Statistics: One-way ANOVA with Tukey HSD (variance-homogeneous) or Dunnett T3 (variance-inhomogeneous) post-hoc; Kruskal-Wallis for non-normal data; SPSS 23, Microsoft Excel; p<0.05

Plant fresh weight (total wet weight, g/plant): DRF 107.70 +/- 34.03 vs raft 82.02 +/- 22.74 vs grow pipes 77.86 +/- 23.93 (DRF significantly higher than both, p=0.006/0.002; raft = grow pipes, p=0.755)

Plant height (shoot-axis height, cm): DRF 54.09 +/- 8.86 a, raft 46.78 +/- 7.22 b, grow pipes 55.75 +/- 10.65 a (DRF = grow pipes > raft, p=0.010/0.001)

SPAD: DRF 29.76 +/- 2.61, raft 29.09 +/- 2.67, grow pipes 28.63 +/- 2.23 (ns among all three, p=0.659/0.316/0.826)

NO3-N (water): 204.47 +/- 47.98 mg/L (single shared pump-sump mean, common to all three trials)

Feed Conversion Rate (FCR): not reducible to one trial value — reported per staggered fish weight class (2.40 large, 1.43 medium, 0.94 small); see Extraction notes

Growth performance: DRF vs raft vs grow pipes

This paper: Of 16 measured basil growth parameters (Table 2), DRF performed best in 14 and was significantly better than raft and/or grow pipes in 11: total wet weight (107.70 g vs 82.02/77.86 g), leaf mass wet weight (45.36 g vs 34.94/32.74 g), shoot-axis wet weight (27.33 g vs 18.42/20.01 g), shoot-axis height (54.09 cm, tied with grow pipes at 55.75 cm, both > raft’s 46.78 cm), root wet weight (35.00 g, significantly higher than grow pipes’ 25.11 g only), leaf wet weight/length/width of the third shoot node, total dry weight (10.38 g vs 8.07/8.21 g), leaf dry weight (4.96 g vs 3.74/3.75 g), and shoot-axis dry weight (3.03 g vs 1.90/2.04 g). Leaf number, total height (shoot+root combined), root length, and root dry weight showed no significant differences among the three subsystems. System-level totals (sum of all plants per technique) followed the same ranking: DRF produced 2261.68 g total wet weight and 952.66 g total leaf wet weight over the 36-day cycle, roughly 30% more than raft (1722.31 g / 733.77 g) or grow pipes (1635.04 g / 687.50 g). The authors attribute DRF’s advantage to its 5 cm above-water air space (created by progressively lowering the water level over the first two weeks post-transplant), which maintained root/aeroroot oxygen supply once water temperatures exceeded 28 degC (peaking at 34.4 degC in the first third of the trial) and suppressed root activity — visible as browner root coloration — in the continuously-submerged raft and grow-pipe systems.

Compared with:

todo Knaus, Pribbernow, Xu, Appelbaum & Palm 2020 (Sustainability 12:8745) — same research group’s prior decoupled basil/catfish aquaponics study with the same three hydro-components (grow pipes, raft, gravel) but a different fish feed (Skretting ME-4.5 Meerval) and four-fold higher potassium; basil wet weight was 4.4-4.9x higher in grow pipes/raft than in this study, and basil shoot-axis heights (79.7-84.9 cm) and leaf numbers (508.93 leaves/plant over 42 days) were substantially greater, attributed to the richer N:P:K ratio and an extra week of pre-transplant growth. (p.100, 103-104)
todo Zimmermann 2017 (Master’s thesis, University of Rostock) — same experimental design with spearmint (Mentha spicata) instead of basil; grow pipes (639.7 leaves) and raft (532.2) outperformed DRF (482.3) in leaf number, the opposite ranking to this study’s basil result, attributed to a 3.3 degC lower water temperature (24.7 degC) that kept oxygen saturation adequate in raft/grow pipes without needing DRF’s air space. (p.103)
todo Pasch 2018 (Master’s thesis, University of Rostock) — same design, mint under root aeration; DRF grew significantly worse than grow pipes, with root dry weight not significantly different among DRF/raft/grow pipes, again the reverse pattern from this study’s basil result at the lower ambient temperatures used. (p.104-105)
todo Kao, Hsiang & Changhua 1991 — source description of the DRF technique developed for tropical Taiwanese hydroponics; at a lower 25 degC no significant fresh-weight differences were found between DRF, NFT and DFT, but at ~35 degC root activity fell significantly in NFT/DFT while DRF biomass held up, consistent with the mechanism proposed here. (p.102)
todo Kiferle, Maggini & Pardossi 2013 — hydroponic basil at an N:P:K ratio of 10:1:10 mol/m3 over 7 weeks produced 119.41 leaves/plant, 64.09 g leaf fresh weight and 6.03 g dry weight, higher than any subsystem in this study; the authors suggest a 2-week-longer growth period here might have closed part of the gap. (p.103)
todo Elansary, Yessoufou, Shokralla, Mahmoud & Skalicka-Wozniak 2016 — basil fertilized with Osmocote Plus under seaweed-extract treatments produced at most 91.3 leaves/plant over 12 weeks, fewer than the 508.93 leaves/plant reported by the group’s own 2020 aquaponic study but more than this study’s 83.81-108.05 leaves/plant over 5 weeks. (p.103)
todo Walters & Currey 2015 — basil grown hydroponically in raft/DFT outperformed a rectangular-profile NFT system on fresh weight, dry weight and height, a system-design effect the authors note is broadly consistent with root-zone hardware mattering for basil growth. (p.104)

Water chemistry and nutrient limitation

This paper: The single shared pump sump (feeding all three hydroponic subsystems equally) averaged pH 6.5 +/- 0.1, dissolved oxygen 7.8 +/- 0.4 mg/L (100.5% saturation), water temperature 28.0 +/- 2.4 degC (range ~26-34.4 degC), and conductivity 2155.9 +/- 238.5 uS/cm. Dissolved nitrogen was dominated by nitrate (NO3-N 204.47 +/- 47.98 mg/L; total oxidized nitrogen 204.53 +/- 47.97 mg/L; ammonium-N only 0.19 +/- 0.12 mg/L, nitrite-N 0.06 +/- 0.08 mg/L), with orthophosphate 4.71 +/- 2.88 mg/L, potassium 14.67 +/- 3.20 mg/L, magnesium 24.93 +/- 3.79 mg/L, calcium 291.69 +/- 56.66 mg/L, iron 0.02 +/- 0.01 mg/L, and sulfate 42.60 +/- 7.13 mg/L. Benchmarked against an assumed-optimal ~2800 uS/cm hydroponic basil recipe [secondary, cites Morano et al. 2017], nitrogen was close to target and calcium roughly 50% above it, but magnesium reached only ~37%, sulfur ~16%, phosphorus and potassium each under 8%, and iron only ~1% of the assumed-optimal concentration — the authors link this severe P/K/Fe shortfall to early yellow interveinal leaf coloring and necrosis observed in the third week (individual plants in grow pipes and raft only) and to the overall growth performance falling short of comparable studies with richer process water.

Compared with:

todo Morano, Amalfitano, Sellitto, Cuciniello, Maiello & Caruso 2017 — basil grown under 2800-3100 uS/cm EC hydroponic conditions, used as the optimal-EC benchmark against which this study’s nutrient concentrations were rescaled and found deficient in P/K/Mg/S/Fe. (p.102-103)
todo Trejo-Tellez & Gomez-Merino 2012 — standard hydroponic nutrient solution ranges (N 170-235, P 30-60, K 150-300, Ca 160-185, Mg 35-50, S 50-335 mg/L), used as the literature basis for the deficiency comparison. (p.102)
todo Rakocy, Masser & Losordo 2006 — cited for a typical aquaponic EC range of 300-600 uS/cm, much lower than this study’s 2155.9 uS/cm mean. (p.102)
todo Bittsanszky, Uzinger, Gyulai, Mathis, Junge, Villarroel, Kotzen & Komives 2016 — aquaponic nutrient-solution phosphate/potassium levels, cited as the aquaponic-specific (vs. hydroponic) comparison basis for this study’s low P/K. (p.102-103)
todo Lopez-Millan, Grusak, Abadia & Abadia 2013 — review of iron deficiency in plants, cited to support the interpretation that this study’s ~1%-of-optimal Fe concentration drove the observed leaf chlorosis/necrosis. (p.103)

Linked claims

Citations to chase

Extraction notes

Severity tally for this extraction: 0 BLOCK, 0 MATERIAL, 1 CHECK, 2 MINOR. Per SCHEMA.md’s scoring table (0 BLOCK and <=2 MATERIAL = ok), quality: ok is set. CHECK and MINOR do not affect the score.

WARN-CHECK — Plant height, two bases (affects all 3 trial rows), Table 2, p.98. The table reports both “Total height (cm)” (DRF 108.41 +/- 13.45, raft 99.66 +/- 10.80, grow pipes 106.20 +/- 18.94; not significantly different among the three, p=0.142/0.879/0.330) and “Shoot axis height (cm)” (DRF 54.09 +/- 8.86 a, raft 46.78 +/- 7.22 b, grow pipes 55.75 +/- 10.65 a; DRF = grow pipes > raft, p=0.010/0.520/0.001) as two separately labelled, non-interchangeable quantities. Table 2’s own footnote 3 states “Total height (cm) = Shoot axis height (cm) + Root length (cm)” — so “Total height” is shoot height plus submerged root length, while “Shoot axis height” is the above-water/above-medium height alone. SCHEMA.md’s Plant height definition (“cm, at harvest”) does not specify which basis applies when a paper reports both explicitly. Recorded Shoot axis height in the Plant height cell in all three trials, since above-ground height is the more standard agronomic convention for “plant height” and is also the basis on which the subsystems actually differ significantly (the paper’s own point of interest); Total height is recorded as the alternate in trials.csv’s Experimental Remarks. Affects: Plant height cell, all three rows.

WARN-MINOR — Fish initial weight, weight class 1, p.95 (Methods 2.2) vs p.97 (Table 1). Methods states “an average weight of 1310.1 g (+/-29.0)”; Table 1 states “1310.09 +/- 29.00”. Same value at different rounding precision, no interpretive impact. Not used in any trials.csv cell (Fish size initial is recorded NR, see below).

WARN-MINOR — Tank initial mass, weight class 1, running text p.97 vs Table 1 p.97. Results 3.1’s narrative states weight class 1 “had an increase of 8.83 kg and reached 161.66 kg (initial mass: 152.38 kg, Table 1)”, but Table 1 itself states Tank initial mass for class 1 as “152.83 +/- 2.64 kg” — not 152.38. Arithmetic check (not entered in any cell, per SCHEMA.md’s no-derivation rule, only used as evidence for this flag): 152.83 + 8.83 (the stated tank growth, kg) = 161.66, matching the stated final mass exactly; 152.38 + 8.83 = 161.21, which does not match. Table 1’s 152.83 is therefore internally consistent and almost certainly correct; the running-text “152.38” reads as a transposition typo (the “8” and “3” swapped). No trials.csv cell is affected — there is no dedicated “tank initial mass” column in the schema — flagged here for anyone citing the running-text figure directly.

Judgment call — trial structure (3 rows, no HYD control). The paper tests three labelled, replicated (n=3 channels/tubes each) hydroponic-hardware treatments — DRF, raft, grow pipes — all fed from the same single decoupled aquaponic water source (one shared pump sump, Methods 2.1), with no fertilizer-based hydroponic control anywhere in the paper. This is unambiguous evidence of three distinct aquaponic treatment arms per SCHEMA.md’s “one row per aquaponic treatment” rule, so three rows were created (-T1 DRF, -T2 raft, -T3 grow pipes). Because there is no hydroponic comparator, the design is AP-vs-AP-vs-AP, not AP-vs-HYD.

Judgment call — AP/HYD/Tissue nitrate HYD recorded NA, not NR. Per SCHEMA.md’s cell-convention table (“NA…for the HYD columns when there is no hydroponic control”), HYD and Tissue nitrate HYD are NA in all three rows, since no hydroponic control exists at all. Because the AP/HYD pair exists specifically to support the downstream “AP vs. HP” calculation and there is nothing here for AP to be compared against, AP was also recorded NA rather than populated with a same-unit yield figure — the actual yield data is fully captured instead in the dedicated Plant fresh weight, Plant dry matter, and system-level Total-weight-parameters (NO COLUMN) fields. This is a deliberately different choice from the closely related knausAquaponicGrowthBasil2024 (same research group and facility), which recorded AP/HYD as NR rather than NA: that paper did have a fertiliser-solution control paired against its aquaponic arms, but no metric matching the AP/HYD pair’s specific yield-unit shape was reported for it — a true reporting absence (NR), as opposed to this paper’s structural absence of any comparator at all (NA).

Judgment call — Replicates (n). Table 2’s growth-parameter statistics are captioned “n=21”, but the true independently randomized experimental unit is the hydroponic channel/tube (Methods 2.1: “the three techniques…were tested in triplicates”), with 7 plants per channel pooled as subsamples (21 = 3 x 7). Recorded 3 in Replicates (n), following the same true-experimental-unit-vs-pooled-subsample convention already used for mourantianBasilFunctionalGrowth2023 in this vault; n=21 is preserved in the same cell for transparency.

Judgment call — fish data left NR rather than forced into a single value (affects all 3 rows identically). The nine fish tanks are deliberately split into three staggered weight classes (large/medium/small) rather than stocked uniformly, and all report separate means (initial/final weight, FCR, SGR, tank biomass growth) with no stated trial-wide summary and no stated correspondence between a weight class and a specific hydroponic subsystem — the three classes’ pooled effluent feeds all three hydroponic arms equally via the shared pump sump. FCR, SGR, Fish size initial/final, Fish weight gain and Fish biomass created are therefore recorded NR rather than averaged across classes (averaging would be derivation), with the full three-class breakdown preserved in trials.csv’s Experimental Remarks and summarized in the Fish growth data above.

[not reported] fields, grouped by field name (identical across all three trial rows, since the fish/water block is shared):

Fish: Fish Category; Initial Stock density (the IAU’s stated “max 200 kg/m3, 117-130 fish/m3” is a facility design maximum, p.94, not this trial’s realised stocking density); FCR, SGR, Fish size initial/final, Fish weight gain, Fish biomass created, Fish survival rate (see judgment call above); Total Feed (kg); feed N and K composition (only crude protein 42%, fat, fiber, ash, phosphorus 1.02%, calcium, sodium given, Methods 2.2); % of body weight (ration given only as “25% of the recommended feed input”, not %BW/day)
Water: Water type; Water classification; Daily Water exchange rate (540 L of 2450 L replaced twice weekly, not a %/day rate); FUE HYD (NA, no HYD arm); WUE
Plant: Plant Category (no categorical term applied to this trial’s basil beyond the Introduction’s general “culinary herbs” market remark); Plants/m2 (channel/pipe dimensions and per-channel plant counts given, but no stated density); Tissue nitrate AP (plant tissue nitrate never measured, only dissolved water NO3-N)
Design/site: pH Buffers, Climate control, Artificial Lighting (illuminance/PPFD and room temperature/humidity are measured as ambient monitored conditions, p.99, but the paper never states whether any of these were actively controlled, buffered, or supplemented — silence, recorded NR rather than N per SCHEMA.md’s N-vs-NR rule)
FUE AP recorded NA (not NR): no fertilizer was applied to any of the three aquaponic arms by design, so a fertilizer-use-efficiency ratio is not a meaningful quantity here, not merely an unreported one.
Air supplement recorded NR for grow pipes specifically (Methods 2.1.3 describes only the 4 L/min water film with no mention of aeration equipment, unlike the explicit aeration described for DRF/raft) — silence, not stated absence.

[unclear] fields: none — every NR/NA above reflects either a genuine reporting absence or a structural non-applicability, not an ambiguous passage.

Excluded data, flagged per SCHEMA.md rather than force-fit: none of this paper’s data required routing away from trials.csv — unlike some other papers in this vault, Pasch et al. report no plant tissue biochemistry, mineral content, microbiology or proximate composition data at all (only growth morphology, SPAD, and water chemistry), so paschGrowthBasilOcimum2021.plant.csv contains header row only, confirmed after reading the full text (18 pages, no tables or figures describing tissue analytes).

Scanned PDF check: this PDF (MDPI/AgriEngineering typesetting) has a clean, fully extractable text layer via both pdfplumber and PyMuPDF; the pdfplumber extraction showed a duplicated/interleaved-glyph artifact on several pages (an MDPI PDF-generation quirk, not a scan), which was cross-checked and superseded with a PyMuPDF re-extraction for all data-bearing pages. No OCR issue; not added to NEEDS_OCR.md.

Judgment call — author wikilinks. Samuel Appelbaum, Harry W. Palm, and Ulrich Knaus reuse the exact full-name spelling already established in this vault by knausAquaponicGrowthBasil2024 (same three co-authors), rather than an initials-based form, to avoid fragmenting into duplicate author notes. Johannes Pasch and Benny Ratajczak are new wikilink targets, given the same full-name convention.

New tags introduced: none — Meta/Type/Experiment, Meta/Region/Europe, Meta/Fish/African-Catfish, and Meta/Plant/Basil all reuse existing vault tags (confirmed against knausAquaponicGrowthBasil2024, which introduced Meta/Fish/African-Catfish and Meta/Plant/Basil).

New wikilink targets introduced: Johannes Pasch, Benny Ratajczak, Dynamic root floating technique maintains root activity and biomass production better than raft or grow pipes at high water temperature, Decoupled aquaponic effluent without fertilizer supplementation is phosphorus-, potassium- and iron-deficient relative to standard hydroponic basil nutrient targets, Reduced fish feeding rate can stabilize aquaponic water chemistry at the cost of fish growth performance.

Source: Pasch et al. - 2021 - Growth of Basil (Ocimum basilicum) in DRF, Raft, and Grow Pipes with Effluents of African Catfish (C.pdf

Data Tables

Structured data extracted from this paper into the vault's trials.csv / plant_measurements.csv datasets. Fields the paper didn't report are omitted. Download the full datasets (measurements).

Trial Parameters

paschGrowthBasilOcimum2021-T1

Fish

Field	Value
Fish	African catfish (Clarias gariepinus)
Protein	42
P	1.02
Feed routine	Automatic feeders, feeding intervals 9:00 pm-5:00 am every half hour for two seconds (Methods 2.2)
Feed regime	SPECIAL PRO EF 4.5 mm pellets (Alltech Coppens BV, Leende, The Netherlands): 42% crude protein, 13% crude fat, 1.5% fiber, 7.6% ash, 1.02% phosphorus, 1.9% calcium, 0.3% sodium; fed at 25% of the PAL Anlagenbau GmbH-recommended feed input, resulting in minimal growth rates and stable water conditions (Methods 2.2)
Fish trial duration (days)	36

Water

Field	Value
Water recycle	4
Water volume in the system	2450 (L, hydroponics cabin process water total, Methods 2.1; see Experimental Remarks for separate IAU/fish-side component volumes)
Aq pH	6.5 +/- 0.1
pHOptimal	5.5-6.5 [cited from ref. [26] as basil’s recommended hydroponic range, Discussion p.102; not a stated system setpoint/target for this trial]
Dissolved Oxigen	7.8 +/- 0.4
EC	2.16 +/- 0.24
Water temperature	28.0 +/- 2.4
TAN / NH4-N	0.19 +/- 0.12
NO2-N	0.06 +/- 0.08
NO3-N	204.47 +/- 47.98

Plant

Field	Value
Plant	Basil (Ocimum basilicum)
Details	63 seedlings (~4 cm shoot height, 1 true leaf pair) transplanted 18 June 2019 into 3 replicate DRF channels (7 plants/channel, 21 plants total), 30 cm plant spacing; harvested 23 July 2019 after 36 days; no plant mortality during the trial (p.98)
Days Plant after transplant	36
SPAD (aquaponics)	29.76 +/- 2.61
Plant height	54.09 +/- 8.86
Leaf count	108.05 +/- 47.43
Plant fresh weight	107.70 +/- 34.03
Plant dry matter	10.38 +/- 3.44 (total dry weight, g/plant; %DM not reported, recorded per SCHEMA.md’s dry-weight fallback)

System & Setup

Field	Value
System type	Dynamic root floating technique (DRF)
Media Details	Glass fiber channel (reinforced plastic), 280 x 40 x 45 cm, filled with 317 L water; 40 mm-thick polystyrene raft with 5 cm diameter grid-pot holes; from 2 weeks post-transplant, water level lowered 1 cm/day until a 5 cm air space (aeroroot zone) formed beneath the raft, via a variable escape pipe (Methods 2.1.1)
Biological system already in use	Y (Intensive aquaculture unit (IAU) includes a 17 m3 trickling filter as part of standard RAS operation (Materials and Methods, p.94); nitrifying biofiltration converts fish waste to nitrate before water is transferred biweekly to the hydroponics cabin)
Air supplement	Y (Membrane pump (Aqua Medic Mistral 4000, AQUA MEDIC GmbH) transported ~4000 L/h air via 4/6 mm air hoses with two air stones per channel into the system water for the first 14 days post-transplant, before the water level was progressively lowered to create the 5 cm air space (Methods 2.1.1))
Iron supplemented	N (No additional fertilizer added at the grow-out stage (Abstract; Methods 2.3: ‘the plants received only the nutrients from the process water of the fish cycle. No additional fertilizer was added.’); Discussion (p.103) identifies the resulting iron concentration (Fe2+ 0.02 +/- 0.01 mg/L, ~1% of an assumed 1.95 mg/L optimum) as a likely growth-limiting deficiency, with early yellow interveinal leaf coloring and necrosis observed (p.103))
Remineralization	N (Decoupled aquaponic effluent used directly without remineralization/fertilizer supplementation at the grow-out stage (Methods 2.3, Abstract))
Nutrient supplemented	N (No additional fertilizer/nutrient supplementation at the grow-out stage; plants received only nutrients from fish process water (Methods 2.3, Abstract))
Equipment	HQ40d multimeter (Hach Lange GmbH) for DO/temperature/pH/conductivity/redox/salinity; Gallery(TM) Analyzer (Thermo Fisher Scientific) for NH4+/NO2-/NO3-/PO4 3-/K+/Mg2+/Ca2+/Fe2+/SO4 3- via colorimetric hydrazine method; SPAD-502PLUS (Konica Minolta) chlorophyll meter; drying oven UF750plus (Memmert GmbH); membrane pump Aqua Medic Mistral 4000 (AQUA MEDIC GmbH) for DRF/raft aeration; 780 W transfer pump; SPSS 23 and Microsoft Excel for statistics
Control Parameters	Inflow to each hydroponic subsystem set to 4 L/min (Methods 2.1); 25% of PAL Anlagenbau GmbH’s recommended feed input; 540 L process water transferred from IAU to the 2450 L hydroponics-cabin pump sump every Tuesday and Thursday; feeding intervals 9:00 pm-5:00 am, every half hour for two seconds; DRF air space progressively lowered 1 cm/day over 2 weeks post-transplant to a final 5 cm air gap
Combination	African catfish (Clarias gariepinus) and basil (Ocimum basilicum) in a decoupled aquaponic system testing three hydroponic subsystems on one shared fish-effluent water source; this row = Dynamic Root Floating Technique (DRF) subsystem

Site

Field	Value
Region	Europe
Country	Germany
Lat	54.075714
Long	12.096591
Average room Temperature	23.8 (mean; range 18.2-40.0, no SD given, p.99)

Results & Statistics

Field	Value
Measured Unit	g fw/plant (total wet weight; leaf/shoot-axis/root wet weight); g dw/plant (total dry weight; leaf/shoot-axis/root dry weight); cm (total height; shoot-axis height; root length; 3rd-node leaf length/width); count (leaf number); SPAD units (chlorophyll index); umol/m2s (PPFD); mg/L (dissolved water chemistry); dS/m, converted from uS/cm (EC)
Statistic Details	One-way ANOVA; Tukey HSD post-hoc where variance-homogeneous, Dunnett T3 where variance-inhomogeneous; Kruskal-Wallis (non-parametric) where not normally distributed; SPSS 23 (IBM) and Microsoft Excel; significance level p<0.05 (Methods 2.5)
Statistically analysed	Y
Replicates (n)	3 (channels/technique, true experimental unit; growth-parameter statistics in Table 2 use n=21 pooled individual plants — 3 channels x 7 plants — see Experimental Remarks)

Experimental Remarks: TRIAL DEFINITION: T1 = Dynamic Root Floating Technique (DRF) subsystem, one of three hydroponic-hardware treatments (DRF, raft, grow pipes) sharing a single decoupled aquaponic water source (effluent from African catfish reared in the IAU, no additional fertilizer, Methods 2.3). No hydroponic (fertilizer-based) control exists anywhere in this paper — all three arms are aquaponic, differentiated only by hydroponic hardware/root-zone technique, not by water source or fertilization. The comparison this trial belongs to is therefore AP-vs-AP-vs-AP (DRF vs raft vs grow pipes), not AP-vs-HYD; see Extraction notes for the AP/HYD/HYD-column judgment call. | WARN-CHECK Plant height, two bases, Table 2 (p.98): the table reports both ‘Total height (cm)’ (DRF 108.41+/-13.45, raft 99.66+/-10.80, grow pipes 106.20+/-18.94; ns among all three) and ‘Shoot axis height (cm)’ (DRF 54.09+/-8.86 a, raft 46.78+/-7.22 b, grow pipes 55.75+/-10.65 a; DRF=grow pipes>raft, p=0.010/0.001) as two separately labelled, non-interchangeable quantities — Table 2 footnote 3 states ‘Total height (cm) = Shoot axis height (cm) + Root length (cm)’, so ‘Total height’ includes submerged/embedded root length while ‘Shoot axis height’ is above-water/above-medium height only. SCHEMA.md’s ‘Plant height’ column definition (‘cm, at harvest’) does not specify which basis applies when a paper reports both. Recorded Shoot-axis height in the Plant height cell, since above-ground height is the more standard agronomic convention for ‘plant height’ and is the basis that actually differs significantly between subsystems (a result of direct scientific interest in this paper); Total height is given here as the alternate. Affects: Plant height cell in all three trial rows. | NOT DERIVED, left NR (shared across all three trial rows — one IAU supplies all three hydroponic subsystems via a common pump sump, Methods 2.1): Initial Stock density (the IAU is stated to have ‘a stocking density of max 200 kg/m3, 117-130 fish/m3’ as a facility design figure, p.94; this is not stated as the trial’s actual realised stocking density, and the nine fish tanks are deliberately split into three staggered weight classes rather than stocked uniformly, so the facility maximum is not substituted here); FCR, SGR, Fish size initial/final, Fish weight gain, Fish biomass created — Table 1 (p.97) reports these separately for three staggered fish weight classes with no single trial-wide summary value and no stated correspondence between a weight class and a specific hydroponic subsystem (pooled effluent from all three classes feeds all three subsystems equally via the shared pump sump): weight class 1/large (initial 1310.09+/-29.00 g -> final 1395.30+/-15.32 g, tank growth 8.83+/-3.48 kg, FCR 2.40+/-0.85, SGR 0.16+/-0.06%/day); class 2/medium (623.74+/-14.90 -> 702.22+/-12.54 g, tank growth 9.18+/-2.53 kg, FCR 1.43+/-0.45, SGR 0.30+/-0.08%/day); class 3/small (297.13+/-6.52 -> 377.81+/-7.73 g, tank growth 8.71+/-0.62 kg, FCR 0.94+/-0.07, SGR 0.58+/-0.05%/day). Averaging the three classes into one figure would be derivation; recorded NR in the single-value columns, full breakdown preserved here. Total Feed (kg) — FCR and per-class tank biomass gain are both given but total kg feed consumed across the trial is never stated as a single figure. Fish survival rate — no fish mortality/survival % is stated anywhere (the paper’s only mortality statement, ‘there were no mortality losses among the plants,’ p.98, is about the crop, not the fish). N, K (feed) — Methods 2.2 (p.95) gives feed crude protein (42%), crude fat, fiber, ash, phosphorus (1.02%), calcium and sodium, but not feed nitrogen or potassium %. % of body weight — ration is stated only as ‘25% of the recommended feed input’ (a percentage of a recommended rate), not as %BW/day. Daily Water exchange rate — Methods 2.1 (p.94-95) states 540 L of the 2450 L hydroponics-cabin volume was replaced every Tuesday and Thursday (twice weekly, roughly 22% of system volume per event), not a %/day rate; converting to a daily rate would be derivation. Water type, Water classification — the paper calls the water ‘process water’ throughout but never applies a categorical label (e.g. ‘dechlorinated tap water’, ‘borehole water’). Plant Category — ‘culinary herbs’ is used only as a general market-category remark in the Introduction (p.93), never applied as a classification of this specific trial’s basil. Plants/m2 — channel/pipe dimensions and plant counts per channel (7 plants/channel) are given, but a stated planting density (plants/m2) is not; computing one from dimensions and count would be derivation, per the same logic SCHEMA.md applies to fish stocking density. Tissue nitrate AP — plant tissue nitrate was never measured (only dissolved water NO3-N, Methods 2.4). FUE AP — recorded NA rather than NR: no fertilizer was applied to any of the three aquaponic arms (decoupled effluent only), so a fertilizer-use-efficiency ratio is not a meaningful quantity for this design, not merely unreported. WUE — not stated in any form. pH Buffers, Climate control, Artificial Lighting — the paper measures illuminance/PPFD and greenhouse room temperature/humidity as ambient monitored conditions (p.99) but never states whether these were actively controlled/buffered or supplementally provided; NR rather than N or Y, per SCHEMA.md’s silence-is-not-N rule. NO COLUMN (no dedicated trials.csv field): Photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD, umol/m2s) and illuminance (lx x10), measured per subsystem (Table 3, p.99): PPFD DRF 155.83+/-32.29 b, raft 157.92+/-32.14 b, grow pipes 173.10+/-22.40 a (grow pipes significantly higher, p=0.001-0.002 vs DRF/raft); Light (lx x10) DRF 985.00+/-116.70, raft 1013.00+/-93.40, grow pipes 1024.00+/-161.30 (ns, p=0.063 all comparisons). Redox potential 183.3+/-20.1 mV; oxygen saturation 100.5+/-1.1%; salinity 1.0+/-0.1 permil; orthophosphate (PO4 3—P) 4.71+/-2.88 mg/L; potassium (K+) 14.67+/-3.20 mg/L; magnesium (Mg2+) 24.93+/-3.79 mg/L; calcium (Ca2+) 291.69+/-56.66 mg/L; iron (Fe2+) 0.02+/-0.01 mg/L; sulfate (SO4 3-) 42.60+/-7.13 mg/L (all p.99-100, common pump-sump means, shared by all three trials). Root length (cm, Table 2): DRF 54.32+/-8.53 a, raft 53.60+/-10.00 a, grow pipes 50.46+/-11.77 a (ns). Shoot-axis wet weight (g): DRF 27.33+/-10.11 a, raft 18.42+/-6.73 b, grow pipes 20.01+/-7.29 b (DRF significantly higher). Shoot-axis dry weight (g): DRF 3.03+/-1.33 a, raft 1.90+/-0.69 b, grow pipes 2.04+/-0.80 b. Root wet weight (g): DRF 35.00+/-12.03 a, raft 28.65+/-7.69 ab, grow pipes 25.11+/-8.40 b. Root dry weight (g): DRF 2.39+/-0.81, raft 2.44+/-0.41, grow pipes 2.43+/-0.44 (ns). 3rd-node leaf wet weight (g): DRF 1.84+/-0.49 a, raft 1.83+/-0.38 a, grow pipes 1.53+/-0.28 b. Leaf length (cm): DRF 14.29+/-1.62 a, raft 13.12+/-1.72 b, grow pipes 12.77+/-1.25 b. Leaf width (cm): DRF 9.18+/-1.33, raft 8.50+/-1.08 ab, grow pipes 8.31+/-1.06 b. Total weight parameters, system-level sums over all plants in the technique (Table 2 footnote 5, distinct from the per-plant Plant fresh weight/dry matter cells used above): total wet weight DRF 2261.68 g, raft 1722.31 g, grow pipes 1635.04 g; total leaf wet weight DRF 952.66 g, raft 733.77 g, grow pipes 687.50 g; total dry weight DRF 218.06 g, raft 169.55 g, grow pipes 172.36 g; total leaf dry weight DRF 104.23 g, raft 78.65 g, grow pipes 78.45 g. IAU/fish-side component volumes (Methods, p.94, no combined system total stated): nine 1 m3 fish tanks, 1.7 m2 sedimentation tank, 6 m3 pump sump, 17 m3 trickling filter — distinct from the 2450 L hydroponics-cabin volume recorded in the Water volume column. WARN-MINOR Fish initial weight (class 1), p.95 vs Table 1 p.97: Methods 2.2 states ‘an average weight of 1310.1 g (+/-29.0)’; Table 1 states ‘1310.09 +/- 29.00’. Same value at different rounding precision; no cell impact (Fish size initial is recorded NR here). WARN-MINOR Tank initial mass (class 1), running text p.97 vs Table 1 p.97: Results 3.1 narrative states weight class 1 ‘had an increase of 8.83 kg and reached 161.66 kg (initial mass: 152.38 kg, Table 1)’, but Table 1 itself gives Tank initial mass class 1 as ‘152.83 +/- 2.64 kg’, not 152.38. Arithmetic check: 152.83 + 8.83 (stated tank growth) = 161.66, matching the stated final mass exactly; 152.38 + 8.83 = 161.21, which does not match. Table 1’s 152.83 is therefore internally consistent and almost certainly correct; the running-text figure is a likely transposition typo (8 and 3 swapped). No trials.csv cell affected (no dedicated ‘tank initial mass’ column exists); noted for anyone citing this figure from the running text rather than Table 1. | Judgment call — AP/HYD/HYD-labelled columns: this paper has no hydroponic (fertilizer-based) control at all; all three trial arms (DRF, raft, grow pipes) are aquaponic treatments sharing the same decoupled catfish-effluent water source, differentiated only by hydroponic hardware. Per SCHEMA.md’s cell-convention table (‘NA…for the HYD columns when there is no hydroponic control’), HYD and Tissue nitrate HYD are recorded NA in all three rows. Because the AP/HYD pair exists specifically to support the downstream ‘AP vs. HP’ calculation and there is no HP arm here to compare against, AP is also recorded NA rather than populated with a same-unit yield figure that would have nothing to be compared to — the actual per-plant and per-system yield figures are instead fully captured in the dedicated Plant fresh weight, Plant dry matter, and Total-weight-parameters (NO COLUMN, system-level sums) fields above. This differs from the deliberately similar sibling paper knausAquaponicGrowthBasil2024 (same research group and FishGlassHouse facility), which left AP/HYD as NR rather than NA, because that paper did have a fertiliser-solution control paired against its aquaponic arms — there, no metric matching the AP/HYD pair’s specific yield-unit shape was reported, which is a true absence (NR), not a design without a comparator (NA). | Judgment call — Replicates (n): Table 2’s growth-parameter statistics are captioned ‘n=21’, but the true independently-randomised experimental unit is the hydroponic channel/tube (3 channels per technique, Methods 2.1: ‘tested in triplicates’), with 7 plants per channel pooled as pseudo-replicate subsamples (21 = 3x7). Recorded 3 in Replicates (n), following the same true-experimental-unit-vs-pooled-subsample convention used in mourantianBasilFunctionalGrowth2023 in this vault; n=21 is preserved in the same cell for transparency.

paschGrowthBasilOcimum2021-T2

Fish

Field	Value
Fish	African catfish (Clarias gariepinus)
Protein	42
P	1.02
Feed routine	Automatic feeders, feeding intervals 9:00 pm-5:00 am every half hour for two seconds (Methods 2.2)
Feed regime	SPECIAL PRO EF 4.5 mm pellets (Alltech Coppens BV, Leende, The Netherlands): 42% crude protein, 13% crude fat, 1.5% fiber, 7.6% ash, 1.02% phosphorus, 1.9% calcium, 0.3% sodium; fed at 25% of the PAL Anlagenbau GmbH-recommended feed input, resulting in minimal growth rates and stable water conditions (Methods 2.2)
Fish trial duration (days)	36

Water

Field	Value
Water recycle	4
Water volume in the system	2450 (L, hydroponics cabin process water total, Methods 2.1; see Experimental Remarks for separate IAU/fish-side component volumes)
Aq pH	6.5 +/- 0.1
pHOptimal	5.5-6.5 [cited from ref. [26] as basil’s recommended hydroponic range, Discussion p.102; not a stated system setpoint/target for this trial]
Dissolved Oxigen	7.8 +/- 0.4
EC	2.16 +/- 0.24
Water temperature	28.0 +/- 2.4
TAN / NH4-N	0.19 +/- 0.12
NO2-N	0.06 +/- 0.08
NO3-N	204.47 +/- 47.98

Plant

Field	Value
Plant	Basil (Ocimum basilicum)
Details	63 seedlings (~4 cm shoot height, 1 true leaf pair) transplanted 18 June 2019 into 3 replicate raft channels (7 plants/channel, 21 plants total), 30 cm plant spacing; harvested 23 July 2019 after 36 days; no plant mortality during the trial (p.98)
Days Plant after transplant	36
SPAD (aquaponics)	29.09 +/- 2.67
Plant height	46.78 +/- 7.22
Leaf count	83.81 +/- 19.64
Plant fresh weight	82.02 +/- 22.74
Plant dry matter	8.07 +/- 1.92 (total dry weight, g/plant; %DM not reported, recorded per SCHEMA.md’s dry-weight fallback)

System & Setup

Field	Value
System type	Floating raft culture (raft) / deep water culture (DWC)
Media Details	Glass fiber channel (reinforced plastic), 280 x 40 x 45 cm, filled with 317 L water; 40 mm-thick polystyrene raft with 5 cm diameter grid-pot holes, roots permanently submerged in the process water (Methods 2.1.2)
Biological system already in use	Y (Intensive aquaculture unit (IAU) includes a 17 m3 trickling filter as part of standard RAS operation (Materials and Methods, p.94); nitrifying biofiltration converts fish waste to nitrate before water is transferred biweekly to the hydroponics cabin)
Air supplement	Y (Membrane pump (Aqua Medic Mistral 4000, AQUA MEDIC GmbH) transported ~4000 L/h air via 4/6 mm air hoses with two air stones per channel into the system water continuously over the entire experimental period (Methods 2.1.2))
Iron supplemented	N (No additional fertilizer added at the grow-out stage (Abstract; Methods 2.3: ‘the plants received only the nutrients from the process water of the fish cycle. No additional fertilizer was added.’); Discussion (p.103) identifies the resulting iron concentration (Fe2+ 0.02 +/- 0.01 mg/L, ~1% of an assumed 1.95 mg/L optimum) as a likely growth-limiting deficiency, with early yellow interveinal leaf coloring and necrosis observed (p.103))
Remineralization	N (Decoupled aquaponic effluent used directly without remineralization/fertilizer supplementation at the grow-out stage (Methods 2.3, Abstract))
Nutrient supplemented	N (No additional fertilizer/nutrient supplementation at the grow-out stage; plants received only nutrients from fish process water (Methods 2.3, Abstract))
Equipment	HQ40d multimeter (Hach Lange GmbH) for DO/temperature/pH/conductivity/redox/salinity; Gallery(TM) Analyzer (Thermo Fisher Scientific) for NH4+/NO2-/NO3-/PO4 3-/K+/Mg2+/Ca2+/Fe2+/SO4 3- via colorimetric hydrazine method; SPAD-502PLUS (Konica Minolta) chlorophyll meter; drying oven UF750plus (Memmert GmbH); membrane pump Aqua Medic Mistral 4000 (AQUA MEDIC GmbH) for DRF/raft aeration; 780 W transfer pump; SPSS 23 and Microsoft Excel for statistics
Control Parameters	Inflow to each hydroponic subsystem set to 4 L/min (Methods 2.1); 25% of PAL Anlagenbau GmbH’s recommended feed input; 540 L process water transferred from IAU to the 2450 L hydroponics-cabin pump sump every Tuesday and Thursday; feeding intervals 9:00 pm-5:00 am, every half hour for two seconds; DRF air space progressively lowered 1 cm/day over 2 weeks post-transplant to a final 5 cm air gap
Combination	African catfish (Clarias gariepinus) and basil (Ocimum basilicum) in a decoupled aquaponic system testing three hydroponic subsystems on one shared fish-effluent water source; this row = Floating Raft Culture (raft) subsystem

Site

Field	Value
Region	Europe
Country	Germany
Lat	54.075714
Long	12.096591
Average room Temperature	23.8 (mean; range 18.2-40.0, no SD given, p.99)

Results & Statistics

Field	Value
Measured Unit	g fw/plant (total wet weight; leaf/shoot-axis/root wet weight); g dw/plant (total dry weight; leaf/shoot-axis/root dry weight); cm (total height; shoot-axis height; root length; 3rd-node leaf length/width); count (leaf number); SPAD units (chlorophyll index); umol/m2s (PPFD); mg/L (dissolved water chemistry); dS/m, converted from uS/cm (EC)
Statistic Details	One-way ANOVA; Tukey HSD post-hoc where variance-homogeneous, Dunnett T3 where variance-inhomogeneous; Kruskal-Wallis (non-parametric) where not normally distributed; SPSS 23 (IBM) and Microsoft Excel; significance level p<0.05 (Methods 2.5)
Statistically analysed	Y
Replicates (n)	3 (channels/technique, true experimental unit; growth-parameter statistics in Table 2 use n=21 pooled individual plants — 3 channels x 7 plants — see Experimental Remarks)

Experimental Remarks: TRIAL DEFINITION: T2 = Floating Raft Culture (raft) subsystem, one of three hydroponic-hardware treatments (DRF, raft, grow pipes) sharing a single decoupled aquaponic water source (effluent from African catfish reared in the IAU, no additional fertilizer, Methods 2.3). No hydroponic (fertilizer-based) control exists anywhere in this paper — all three arms are aquaponic, differentiated only by hydroponic hardware/root-zone technique, not by water source or fertilization. The comparison this trial belongs to is therefore AP-vs-AP-vs-AP (DRF vs raft vs grow pipes), not AP-vs-HYD; see Extraction notes for the AP/HYD/HYD-column judgment call. | WARN-CHECK Plant height, two bases, Table 2 (p.98): the table reports both ‘Total height (cm)’ (DRF 108.41+/-13.45, raft 99.66+/-10.80, grow pipes 106.20+/-18.94; ns among all three) and ‘Shoot axis height (cm)’ (DRF 54.09+/-8.86 a, raft 46.78+/-7.22 b, grow pipes 55.75+/-10.65 a; DRF=grow pipes>raft, p=0.010/0.001) as two separately labelled, non-interchangeable quantities — Table 2 footnote 3 states ‘Total height (cm) = Shoot axis height (cm) + Root length (cm)’, so ‘Total height’ includes submerged/embedded root length while ‘Shoot axis height’ is above-water/above-medium height only. SCHEMA.md’s ‘Plant height’ column definition (‘cm, at harvest’) does not specify which basis applies when a paper reports both. Recorded Shoot-axis height in the Plant height cell, since above-ground height is the more standard agronomic convention for ‘plant height’ and is the basis that actually differs significantly between subsystems (a result of direct scientific interest in this paper); Total height is given here as the alternate. Affects: Plant height cell in all three trial rows. | NOT DERIVED, left NR (shared across all three trial rows — one IAU supplies all three hydroponic subsystems via a common pump sump, Methods 2.1): Initial Stock density (the IAU is stated to have ‘a stocking density of max 200 kg/m3, 117-130 fish/m3’ as a facility design figure, p.94; this is not stated as the trial’s actual realised stocking density, and the nine fish tanks are deliberately split into three staggered weight classes rather than stocked uniformly, so the facility maximum is not substituted here); FCR, SGR, Fish size initial/final, Fish weight gain, Fish biomass created — Table 1 (p.97) reports these separately for three staggered fish weight classes with no single trial-wide summary value and no stated correspondence between a weight class and a specific hydroponic subsystem (pooled effluent from all three classes feeds all three subsystems equally via the shared pump sump): weight class 1/large (initial 1310.09+/-29.00 g -> final 1395.30+/-15.32 g, tank growth 8.83+/-3.48 kg, FCR 2.40+/-0.85, SGR 0.16+/-0.06%/day); class 2/medium (623.74+/-14.90 -> 702.22+/-12.54 g, tank growth 9.18+/-2.53 kg, FCR 1.43+/-0.45, SGR 0.30+/-0.08%/day); class 3/small (297.13+/-6.52 -> 377.81+/-7.73 g, tank growth 8.71+/-0.62 kg, FCR 0.94+/-0.07, SGR 0.58+/-0.05%/day). Averaging the three classes into one figure would be derivation; recorded NR in the single-value columns, full breakdown preserved here. Total Feed (kg) — FCR and per-class tank biomass gain are both given but total kg feed consumed across the trial is never stated as a single figure. Fish survival rate — no fish mortality/survival % is stated anywhere (the paper’s only mortality statement, ‘there were no mortality losses among the plants,’ p.98, is about the crop, not the fish). N, K (feed) — Methods 2.2 (p.95) gives feed crude protein (42%), crude fat, fiber, ash, phosphorus (1.02%), calcium and sodium, but not feed nitrogen or potassium %. % of body weight — ration is stated only as ‘25% of the recommended feed input’ (a percentage of a recommended rate), not as %BW/day. Daily Water exchange rate — Methods 2.1 (p.94-95) states 540 L of the 2450 L hydroponics-cabin volume was replaced every Tuesday and Thursday (twice weekly, roughly 22% of system volume per event), not a %/day rate; converting to a daily rate would be derivation. Water type, Water classification — the paper calls the water ‘process water’ throughout but never applies a categorical label (e.g. ‘dechlorinated tap water’, ‘borehole water’). Plant Category — ‘culinary herbs’ is used only as a general market-category remark in the Introduction (p.93), never applied as a classification of this specific trial’s basil. Plants/m2 — channel/pipe dimensions and plant counts per channel (7 plants/channel) are given, but a stated planting density (plants/m2) is not; computing one from dimensions and count would be derivation, per the same logic SCHEMA.md applies to fish stocking density. Tissue nitrate AP — plant tissue nitrate was never measured (only dissolved water NO3-N, Methods 2.4). FUE AP — recorded NA rather than NR: no fertilizer was applied to any of the three aquaponic arms (decoupled effluent only), so a fertilizer-use-efficiency ratio is not a meaningful quantity for this design, not merely unreported. WUE — not stated in any form. pH Buffers, Climate control, Artificial Lighting — the paper measures illuminance/PPFD and greenhouse room temperature/humidity as ambient monitored conditions (p.99) but never states whether these were actively controlled/buffered or supplementally provided; NR rather than N or Y, per SCHEMA.md’s silence-is-not-N rule. NO COLUMN (no dedicated trials.csv field): Photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD, umol/m2s) and illuminance (lx x10), measured per subsystem (Table 3, p.99): PPFD DRF 155.83+/-32.29 b, raft 157.92+/-32.14 b, grow pipes 173.10+/-22.40 a (grow pipes significantly higher, p=0.001-0.002 vs DRF/raft); Light (lx x10) DRF 985.00+/-116.70, raft 1013.00+/-93.40, grow pipes 1024.00+/-161.30 (ns, p=0.063 all comparisons). Redox potential 183.3+/-20.1 mV; oxygen saturation 100.5+/-1.1%; salinity 1.0+/-0.1 permil; orthophosphate (PO4 3—P) 4.71+/-2.88 mg/L; potassium (K+) 14.67+/-3.20 mg/L; magnesium (Mg2+) 24.93+/-3.79 mg/L; calcium (Ca2+) 291.69+/-56.66 mg/L; iron (Fe2+) 0.02+/-0.01 mg/L; sulfate (SO4 3-) 42.60+/-7.13 mg/L (all p.99-100, common pump-sump means, shared by all three trials). Root length (cm, Table 2): DRF 54.32+/-8.53 a, raft 53.60+/-10.00 a, grow pipes 50.46+/-11.77 a (ns). Shoot-axis wet weight (g): DRF 27.33+/-10.11 a, raft 18.42+/-6.73 b, grow pipes 20.01+/-7.29 b (DRF significantly higher). Shoot-axis dry weight (g): DRF 3.03+/-1.33 a, raft 1.90+/-0.69 b, grow pipes 2.04+/-0.80 b. Root wet weight (g): DRF 35.00+/-12.03 a, raft 28.65+/-7.69 ab, grow pipes 25.11+/-8.40 b. Root dry weight (g): DRF 2.39+/-0.81, raft 2.44+/-0.41, grow pipes 2.43+/-0.44 (ns). 3rd-node leaf wet weight (g): DRF 1.84+/-0.49 a, raft 1.83+/-0.38 a, grow pipes 1.53+/-0.28 b. Leaf length (cm): DRF 14.29+/-1.62 a, raft 13.12+/-1.72 b, grow pipes 12.77+/-1.25 b. Leaf width (cm): DRF 9.18+/-1.33, raft 8.50+/-1.08 ab, grow pipes 8.31+/-1.06 b. Total weight parameters, system-level sums over all plants in the technique (Table 2 footnote 5, distinct from the per-plant Plant fresh weight/dry matter cells used above): total wet weight DRF 2261.68 g, raft 1722.31 g, grow pipes 1635.04 g; total leaf wet weight DRF 952.66 g, raft 733.77 g, grow pipes 687.50 g; total dry weight DRF 218.06 g, raft 169.55 g, grow pipes 172.36 g; total leaf dry weight DRF 104.23 g, raft 78.65 g, grow pipes 78.45 g. IAU/fish-side component volumes (Methods, p.94, no combined system total stated): nine 1 m3 fish tanks, 1.7 m2 sedimentation tank, 6 m3 pump sump, 17 m3 trickling filter — distinct from the 2450 L hydroponics-cabin volume recorded in the Water volume column. WARN-MINOR Fish initial weight (class 1), p.95 vs Table 1 p.97: Methods 2.2 states ‘an average weight of 1310.1 g (+/-29.0)’; Table 1 states ‘1310.09 +/- 29.00’. Same value at different rounding precision; no cell impact (Fish size initial is recorded NR here). WARN-MINOR Tank initial mass (class 1), running text p.97 vs Table 1 p.97: Results 3.1 narrative states weight class 1 ‘had an increase of 8.83 kg and reached 161.66 kg (initial mass: 152.38 kg, Table 1)’, but Table 1 itself gives Tank initial mass class 1 as ‘152.83 +/- 2.64 kg’, not 152.38. Arithmetic check: 152.83 + 8.83 (stated tank growth) = 161.66, matching the stated final mass exactly; 152.38 + 8.83 = 161.21, which does not match. Table 1’s 152.83 is therefore internally consistent and almost certainly correct; the running-text figure is a likely transposition typo (8 and 3 swapped). No trials.csv cell affected (no dedicated ‘tank initial mass’ column exists); noted for anyone citing this figure from the running text rather than Table 1. | Judgment call — AP/HYD/HYD-labelled columns: this paper has no hydroponic (fertilizer-based) control at all; all three trial arms (DRF, raft, grow pipes) are aquaponic treatments sharing the same decoupled catfish-effluent water source, differentiated only by hydroponic hardware. Per SCHEMA.md’s cell-convention table (‘NA…for the HYD columns when there is no hydroponic control’), HYD and Tissue nitrate HYD are recorded NA in all three rows. Because the AP/HYD pair exists specifically to support the downstream ‘AP vs. HP’ calculation and there is no HP arm here to compare against, AP is also recorded NA rather than populated with a same-unit yield figure that would have nothing to be compared to — the actual per-plant and per-system yield figures are instead fully captured in the dedicated Plant fresh weight, Plant dry matter, and Total-weight-parameters (NO COLUMN, system-level sums) fields above. This differs from the deliberately similar sibling paper knausAquaponicGrowthBasil2024 (same research group and FishGlassHouse facility), which left AP/HYD as NR rather than NA, because that paper did have a fertiliser-solution control paired against its aquaponic arms — there, no metric matching the AP/HYD pair’s specific yield-unit shape was reported, which is a true absence (NR), not a design without a comparator (NA). | Judgment call — Replicates (n): Table 2’s growth-parameter statistics are captioned ‘n=21’, but the true independently-randomised experimental unit is the hydroponic channel/tube (3 channels per technique, Methods 2.1: ‘tested in triplicates’), with 7 plants per channel pooled as pseudo-replicate subsamples (21 = 3x7). Recorded 3 in Replicates (n), following the same true-experimental-unit-vs-pooled-subsample convention used in mourantianBasilFunctionalGrowth2023 in this vault; n=21 is preserved in the same cell for transparency.

paschGrowthBasilOcimum2021-T3

Fish

Field	Value
Fish	African catfish (Clarias gariepinus)
Protein	42
P	1.02
Feed routine	Automatic feeders, feeding intervals 9:00 pm-5:00 am every half hour for two seconds (Methods 2.2)
Feed regime	SPECIAL PRO EF 4.5 mm pellets (Alltech Coppens BV, Leende, The Netherlands): 42% crude protein, 13% crude fat, 1.5% fiber, 7.6% ash, 1.02% phosphorus, 1.9% calcium, 0.3% sodium; fed at 25% of the PAL Anlagenbau GmbH-recommended feed input, resulting in minimal growth rates and stable water conditions (Methods 2.2)
Fish trial duration (days)	36

Water

Field	Value
Water recycle	4
Water volume in the system	2450 (L, hydroponics cabin process water total, Methods 2.1; see Experimental Remarks for separate IAU/fish-side component volumes)
Aq pH	6.5 +/- 0.1
pHOptimal	5.5-6.5 [cited from ref. [26] as basil’s recommended hydroponic range, Discussion p.102; not a stated system setpoint/target for this trial]
Dissolved Oxigen	7.8 +/- 0.4
EC	2.16 +/- 0.24
Water temperature	28.0 +/- 2.4
TAN / NH4-N	0.19 +/- 0.12
NO2-N	0.06 +/- 0.08
NO3-N	204.47 +/- 47.98

Plant

Field	Value
Plant	Basil (Ocimum basilicum)
Details	63 seedlings (~4 cm shoot height, 1 true leaf pair) transplanted 18 June 2019 into 3 replicate grow-pipe tubes (7 plants/tube, 21 plants total), 30 cm plant spacing; harvested 23 July 2019 after 36 days; no plant mortality during the trial (p.98)
Days Plant after transplant	36
SPAD (aquaponics)	28.63 +/- 2.23
Plant height	55.75 +/- 10.65
Leaf count	89.90 +/- 26.84
Plant fresh weight	77.86 +/- 23.93
Plant dry matter	8.21 +/- 2.35 (total dry weight, g/plant; %DM not reported, recorded per SCHEMA.md’s dry-weight fallback)

System & Setup

Field	Value
System type	Grow pipes (unplasticized PVC sewage-drainage-pipe closed channel, comparable to nutrient film technique)
Media Details	Unplasticized PVC sewage drainage pipe, 275 cm length x 12 cm diameter, 2.12% slope; 7 grid-pot holes per tube, seedlings fixed to the pipe with wires to match initial plant height of the other subsystems; roots constantly covered by a 4 L/min water film (Methods 2.1.3)
Biological system already in use	Y (Intensive aquaculture unit (IAU) includes a 17 m3 trickling filter as part of standard RAS operation (Materials and Methods, p.94); nitrifying biofiltration converts fish waste to nitrate before water is transferred biweekly to the hydroponics cabin)
Iron supplemented	N (No additional fertilizer added at the grow-out stage (Abstract; Methods 2.3: ‘the plants received only the nutrients from the process water of the fish cycle. No additional fertilizer was added.’); Discussion (p.103) identifies the resulting iron concentration (Fe2+ 0.02 +/- 0.01 mg/L, ~1% of an assumed 1.95 mg/L optimum) as a likely growth-limiting deficiency, with early yellow interveinal leaf coloring and necrosis observed (p.103))
Remineralization	N (Decoupled aquaponic effluent used directly without remineralization/fertilizer supplementation at the grow-out stage (Methods 2.3, Abstract))
Nutrient supplemented	N (No additional fertilizer/nutrient supplementation at the grow-out stage; plants received only nutrients from fish process water (Methods 2.3, Abstract))
Equipment	HQ40d multimeter (Hach Lange GmbH) for DO/temperature/pH/conductivity/redox/salinity; Gallery(TM) Analyzer (Thermo Fisher Scientific) for NH4+/NO2-/NO3-/PO4 3-/K+/Mg2+/Ca2+/Fe2+/SO4 3- via colorimetric hydrazine method; SPAD-502PLUS (Konica Minolta) chlorophyll meter; drying oven UF750plus (Memmert GmbH); membrane pump Aqua Medic Mistral 4000 (AQUA MEDIC GmbH) for DRF/raft aeration; 780 W transfer pump; SPSS 23 and Microsoft Excel for statistics
Control Parameters	Inflow to each hydroponic subsystem set to 4 L/min (Methods 2.1); 25% of PAL Anlagenbau GmbH’s recommended feed input; 540 L process water transferred from IAU to the 2450 L hydroponics-cabin pump sump every Tuesday and Thursday; feeding intervals 9:00 pm-5:00 am, every half hour for two seconds; DRF air space progressively lowered 1 cm/day over 2 weeks post-transplant to a final 5 cm air gap
Combination	African catfish (Clarias gariepinus) and basil (Ocimum basilicum) in a decoupled aquaponic system testing three hydroponic subsystems on one shared fish-effluent water source; this row = Grow Pipes subsystem

Site

Field	Value
Region	Europe
Country	Germany
Lat	54.075714
Long	12.096591
Average room Temperature	23.8 (mean; range 18.2-40.0, no SD given, p.99)

Results & Statistics

Field	Value
Measured Unit	g fw/plant (total wet weight; leaf/shoot-axis/root wet weight); g dw/plant (total dry weight; leaf/shoot-axis/root dry weight); cm (total height; shoot-axis height; root length; 3rd-node leaf length/width); count (leaf number); SPAD units (chlorophyll index); umol/m2s (PPFD); mg/L (dissolved water chemistry); dS/m, converted from uS/cm (EC)
Statistic Details	One-way ANOVA; Tukey HSD post-hoc where variance-homogeneous, Dunnett T3 where variance-inhomogeneous; Kruskal-Wallis (non-parametric) where not normally distributed; SPSS 23 (IBM) and Microsoft Excel; significance level p<0.05 (Methods 2.5)
Statistically analysed	Y
Replicates (n)	3 (channels/technique, true experimental unit; growth-parameter statistics in Table 2 use n=21 pooled individual plants — 3 channels x 7 plants — see Experimental Remarks)

Experimental Remarks: TRIAL DEFINITION: T3 = Grow Pipes subsystem, one of three hydroponic-hardware treatments (DRF, raft, grow pipes) sharing a single decoupled aquaponic water source (effluent from African catfish reared in the IAU, no additional fertilizer, Methods 2.3). No hydroponic (fertilizer-based) control exists anywhere in this paper — all three arms are aquaponic, differentiated only by hydroponic hardware/root-zone technique, not by water source or fertilization. The comparison this trial belongs to is therefore AP-vs-AP-vs-AP (DRF vs raft vs grow pipes), not AP-vs-HYD; see Extraction notes for the AP/HYD/HYD-column judgment call. | WARN-CHECK Plant height, two bases, Table 2 (p.98): the table reports both ‘Total height (cm)’ (DRF 108.41+/-13.45, raft 99.66+/-10.80, grow pipes 106.20+/-18.94; ns among all three) and ‘Shoot axis height (cm)’ (DRF 54.09+/-8.86 a, raft 46.78+/-7.22 b, grow pipes 55.75+/-10.65 a; DRF=grow pipes>raft, p=0.010/0.001) as two separately labelled, non-interchangeable quantities — Table 2 footnote 3 states ‘Total height (cm) = Shoot axis height (cm) + Root length (cm)’, so ‘Total height’ includes submerged/embedded root length while ‘Shoot axis height’ is above-water/above-medium height only. SCHEMA.md’s ‘Plant height’ column definition (‘cm, at harvest’) does not specify which basis applies when a paper reports both. Recorded Shoot-axis height in the Plant height cell, since above-ground height is the more standard agronomic convention for ‘plant height’ and is the basis that actually differs significantly between subsystems (a result of direct scientific interest in this paper); Total height is given here as the alternate. Affects: Plant height cell in all three trial rows. | NOT DERIVED, left NR (shared across all three trial rows — one IAU supplies all three hydroponic subsystems via a common pump sump, Methods 2.1): Initial Stock density (the IAU is stated to have ‘a stocking density of max 200 kg/m3, 117-130 fish/m3’ as a facility design figure, p.94; this is not stated as the trial’s actual realised stocking density, and the nine fish tanks are deliberately split into three staggered weight classes rather than stocked uniformly, so the facility maximum is not substituted here); FCR, SGR, Fish size initial/final, Fish weight gain, Fish biomass created — Table 1 (p.97) reports these separately for three staggered fish weight classes with no single trial-wide summary value and no stated correspondence between a weight class and a specific hydroponic subsystem (pooled effluent from all three classes feeds all three subsystems equally via the shared pump sump): weight class 1/large (initial 1310.09+/-29.00 g -> final 1395.30+/-15.32 g, tank growth 8.83+/-3.48 kg, FCR 2.40+/-0.85, SGR 0.16+/-0.06%/day); class 2/medium (623.74+/-14.90 -> 702.22+/-12.54 g, tank growth 9.18+/-2.53 kg, FCR 1.43+/-0.45, SGR 0.30+/-0.08%/day); class 3/small (297.13+/-6.52 -> 377.81+/-7.73 g, tank growth 8.71+/-0.62 kg, FCR 0.94+/-0.07, SGR 0.58+/-0.05%/day). Averaging the three classes into one figure would be derivation; recorded NR in the single-value columns, full breakdown preserved here. Total Feed (kg) — FCR and per-class tank biomass gain are both given but total kg feed consumed across the trial is never stated as a single figure. Fish survival rate — no fish mortality/survival % is stated anywhere (the paper’s only mortality statement, ‘there were no mortality losses among the plants,’ p.98, is about the crop, not the fish). N, K (feed) — Methods 2.2 (p.95) gives feed crude protein (42%), crude fat, fiber, ash, phosphorus (1.02%), calcium and sodium, but not feed nitrogen or potassium %. % of body weight — ration is stated only as ‘25% of the recommended feed input’ (a percentage of a recommended rate), not as %BW/day. Daily Water exchange rate — Methods 2.1 (p.94-95) states 540 L of the 2450 L hydroponics-cabin volume was replaced every Tuesday and Thursday (twice weekly, roughly 22% of system volume per event), not a %/day rate; converting to a daily rate would be derivation. Water type, Water classification — the paper calls the water ‘process water’ throughout but never applies a categorical label (e.g. ‘dechlorinated tap water’, ‘borehole water’). Plant Category — ‘culinary herbs’ is used only as a general market-category remark in the Introduction (p.93), never applied as a classification of this specific trial’s basil. Plants/m2 — channel/pipe dimensions and plant counts per channel (7 plants/channel) are given, but a stated planting density (plants/m2) is not; computing one from dimensions and count would be derivation, per the same logic SCHEMA.md applies to fish stocking density. Tissue nitrate AP — plant tissue nitrate was never measured (only dissolved water NO3-N, Methods 2.4). FUE AP — recorded NA rather than NR: no fertilizer was applied to any of the three aquaponic arms (decoupled effluent only), so a fertilizer-use-efficiency ratio is not a meaningful quantity for this design, not merely unreported. WUE — not stated in any form. pH Buffers, Climate control, Artificial Lighting — the paper measures illuminance/PPFD and greenhouse room temperature/humidity as ambient monitored conditions (p.99) but never states whether these were actively controlled/buffered or supplementally provided; NR rather than N or Y, per SCHEMA.md’s silence-is-not-N rule. NO COLUMN (no dedicated trials.csv field): Photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD, umol/m2s) and illuminance (lx x10), measured per subsystem (Table 3, p.99): PPFD DRF 155.83+/-32.29 b, raft 157.92+/-32.14 b, grow pipes 173.10+/-22.40 a (grow pipes significantly higher, p=0.001-0.002 vs DRF/raft); Light (lx x10) DRF 985.00+/-116.70, raft 1013.00+/-93.40, grow pipes 1024.00+/-161.30 (ns, p=0.063 all comparisons). Redox potential 183.3+/-20.1 mV; oxygen saturation 100.5+/-1.1%; salinity 1.0+/-0.1 permil; orthophosphate (PO4 3—P) 4.71+/-2.88 mg/L; potassium (K+) 14.67+/-3.20 mg/L; magnesium (Mg2+) 24.93+/-3.79 mg/L; calcium (Ca2+) 291.69+/-56.66 mg/L; iron (Fe2+) 0.02+/-0.01 mg/L; sulfate (SO4 3-) 42.60+/-7.13 mg/L (all p.99-100, common pump-sump means, shared by all three trials). Root length (cm, Table 2): DRF 54.32+/-8.53 a, raft 53.60+/-10.00 a, grow pipes 50.46+/-11.77 a (ns). Shoot-axis wet weight (g): DRF 27.33+/-10.11 a, raft 18.42+/-6.73 b, grow pipes 20.01+/-7.29 b (DRF significantly higher). Shoot-axis dry weight (g): DRF 3.03+/-1.33 a, raft 1.90+/-0.69 b, grow pipes 2.04+/-0.80 b. Root wet weight (g): DRF 35.00+/-12.03 a, raft 28.65+/-7.69 ab, grow pipes 25.11+/-8.40 b. Root dry weight (g): DRF 2.39+/-0.81, raft 2.44+/-0.41, grow pipes 2.43+/-0.44 (ns). 3rd-node leaf wet weight (g): DRF 1.84+/-0.49 a, raft 1.83+/-0.38 a, grow pipes 1.53+/-0.28 b. Leaf length (cm): DRF 14.29+/-1.62 a, raft 13.12+/-1.72 b, grow pipes 12.77+/-1.25 b. Leaf width (cm): DRF 9.18+/-1.33, raft 8.50+/-1.08 ab, grow pipes 8.31+/-1.06 b. Total weight parameters, system-level sums over all plants in the technique (Table 2 footnote 5, distinct from the per-plant Plant fresh weight/dry matter cells used above): total wet weight DRF 2261.68 g, raft 1722.31 g, grow pipes 1635.04 g; total leaf wet weight DRF 952.66 g, raft 733.77 g, grow pipes 687.50 g; total dry weight DRF 218.06 g, raft 169.55 g, grow pipes 172.36 g; total leaf dry weight DRF 104.23 g, raft 78.65 g, grow pipes 78.45 g. IAU/fish-side component volumes (Methods, p.94, no combined system total stated): nine 1 m3 fish tanks, 1.7 m2 sedimentation tank, 6 m3 pump sump, 17 m3 trickling filter — distinct from the 2450 L hydroponics-cabin volume recorded in the Water volume column. WARN-MINOR Fish initial weight (class 1), p.95 vs Table 1 p.97: Methods 2.2 states ‘an average weight of 1310.1 g (+/-29.0)’; Table 1 states ‘1310.09 +/- 29.00’. Same value at different rounding precision; no cell impact (Fish size initial is recorded NR here). WARN-MINOR Tank initial mass (class 1), running text p.97 vs Table 1 p.97: Results 3.1 narrative states weight class 1 ‘had an increase of 8.83 kg and reached 161.66 kg (initial mass: 152.38 kg, Table 1)’, but Table 1 itself gives Tank initial mass class 1 as ‘152.83 +/- 2.64 kg’, not 152.38. Arithmetic check: 152.83 + 8.83 (stated tank growth) = 161.66, matching the stated final mass exactly; 152.38 + 8.83 = 161.21, which does not match. Table 1’s 152.83 is therefore internally consistent and almost certainly correct; the running-text figure is a likely transposition typo (8 and 3 swapped). No trials.csv cell affected (no dedicated ‘tank initial mass’ column exists); noted for anyone citing this figure from the running text rather than Table 1. | Judgment call — AP/HYD/HYD-labelled columns: this paper has no hydroponic (fertilizer-based) control at all; all three trial arms (DRF, raft, grow pipes) are aquaponic treatments sharing the same decoupled catfish-effluent water source, differentiated only by hydroponic hardware. Per SCHEMA.md’s cell-convention table (‘NA…for the HYD columns when there is no hydroponic control’), HYD and Tissue nitrate HYD are recorded NA in all three rows. Because the AP/HYD pair exists specifically to support the downstream ‘AP vs. HP’ calculation and there is no HP arm here to compare against, AP is also recorded NA rather than populated with a same-unit yield figure that would have nothing to be compared to — the actual per-plant and per-system yield figures are instead fully captured in the dedicated Plant fresh weight, Plant dry matter, and Total-weight-parameters (NO COLUMN, system-level sums) fields above. This differs from the deliberately similar sibling paper knausAquaponicGrowthBasil2024 (same research group and FishGlassHouse facility), which left AP/HYD as NR rather than NA, because that paper did have a fertiliser-solution control paired against its aquaponic arms — there, no metric matching the AP/HYD pair’s specific yield-unit shape was reported, which is a true absence (NR), not a design without a comparator (NA). | Judgment call — Replicates (n): Table 2’s growth-parameter statistics are captioned ‘n=21’, but the true independently-randomised experimental unit is the hydroponic channel/tube (3 channels per technique, Methods 2.1: ‘tested in triplicates’), with 7 plants per channel pooled as pseudo-replicate subsamples (21 = 3x7). Recorded 3 in Replicates (n), following the same true-experimental-unit-vs-pooled-subsample convention used in mourantianBasilFunctionalGrowth2023 in this vault; n=21 is preserved in the same cell for transparency.

Quartz 5

Explorer

Growth of Basil (Ocimum basilicum) in DRF, Raft, and Grow Pipes with Effluents of African Catfish (Clarias gariepinus) in Decoupled Aquaponics

Growth of Basil (Ocimum basilicum) in DRF, Raft, and Grow Pipes with Effluents of African Catfish (Clarias gariepinus) in Decoupled Aquaponics

Metadata

Abstract

Summary

Growth performance: DRF vs raft vs grow pipes

Water chemistry and nutrient limitation

Linked claims

Citations to chase

Extraction notes

Data Tables

Trial Parameters

paschGrowthBasilOcimum2021-T1

paschGrowthBasilOcimum2021-T2

paschGrowthBasilOcimum2021-T3

Graph View

Table of Contents

Backlinks