• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.152-159
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• 2003

This study was conducted to analyze the water consumption in closed transplants production system (CTPS) for the production of quality transplants and to investigate the effect of relative humidity on the water balance in CTPS. Potato (Solanum tuberosum L. cv. Dejima) plug seedlings were grown for 15 days at air temperature of 20$^{\circ}C$, relative humidity of 70%, photoperiod of 16/8 h, and photosynthetic photon flux (PPF) of 200 ${\mu}mol{\cdot}m^{-2}{\cdot}s^{-l}$ following rooting for 5 days in CTPS. Amount of humidified, dehumidified, irrigated and evapotranspirated water were 67.9 kg${\cdot}m^{-2},\;196.9{\cdot}m^{-2},\;44.3\;kg{\cdot}m^{-2},\;33.5\;kg{\cdot}m^{-2}$, respectively. Water content of media and plants were 1.2 kg${\cdot}m^{-2},\;6.9\;kg{\cdot}m^{-2}$, respectively. Three relative humidity levels of 60, 70, and 80% were provided to analyze the effect of humidity on the water balance in CTPS. Amount of humidified, dehumidified, irrigated, evapotranspiratad water and water contents of media and plants increased with increasing relative humidity. Since the water consumption required to produce plug seedlings in CTPS dec1eased with decreasing relative humidity, the available water utilization efficiency of CTPS increased with decreasing relative humidity. CTPS showed high available water utilization efficiency of 0.92 - 0.97 if dehumidified water in CTPS was recycled. The development of CTPS with recycling system of dehumidified water will not only reduce the water consuming for the production of transplants but contribute to the establishment of plant production economizing in water consumption.