An improved, low-cost, hydroponic system for growing Arabidopsis and other plant species under aseptic conditions

BMC Plant Biology

Table 1 Comparison between hydroponic systems previously reported and the system proposed here

Parameter	Agar-filled plastic holder	Rockwool-filled plastic holder	Sponge into a polypropylene sheet	Polyethylene granulate	Stainless mesh fixed two metal rigs/Nylon mesh on photo slide mount	This system
Liquid medium container	Plastic box	Plastic box	Magenta GA-7 vessel®	Glass vessel	Round-rim glass jars/glass vessel	Plastic container
Costs	Intermediate to high	Intermediate	High	High	High	Low
Setup time	Intermediate to high	Intermediate	Low	Low	High	Low to intermediate
Reuse of seed-holder	No	No	No	No	Yes/No	Yes
Throughput	Intermediate	Intermediate	High	High	High/intermediate	Intermediate
Container volume	Small to high	Small to intermediate	Small	Small to high	Intermediate	Intermediate to high
Medium evaporation	High	High	Low	High	Low/High	Low
Seedling number per holder	One	One	One	Many	Many	Many
Sterility	No	No	Yes	No	Yes/No	Yes
Aeration	Yes/No	Yes/No	No	No	No	No
Time for moving and sampling large batches of plants between media	High	High	High	High	High	Low
Development window	Adult plants	Adult plants	Seedling to adult plants	Seedling	Seedling	Seedling to adult plants
References	[3, 9, 12]	[4, 10, 11]	[6]	[7]	[5, 8, 13]

ISSN: 1471-2229