Evaluation of mint and sweet basil herbs production integrated into the Aquaponic Tilapia production system

The impacts of climate change combined with water shortage and the need to increase food production to meet increasing population stimulate the implementation of Aquaponic systems not only on food scale but also on some medicinal plants in agriculture production. The current experiment was conducted at the Institute of Graduate Arid Land Agriculture and Research Institute (ALARI) at Ain Shams University, Egypt, to test sweet basil and mint development during the summer seasons of 2017 and 2018 under urban conditions through the aquaponic system. The objective of the study was to investigate the use of aquaponic compared to the chemical nutrient solution (control) as a nutritional source combined with two plant densities (6 and 8 plants / m²) in the design of complete randomized blocks for evaluating basil and mint growth. The density of the Nile Tilapia was 100 fish / m3 in the aquaponic facility. The yield characteristics, the nutrient (N, P and K) and the oil content (percent) of basil and mint, have been measured in. Reveled results indicated that basil plant had a higher capacity for removing NH4, NO3, P and K from fish rearing water than mint while plant density 8 plants/m2 had a higher capacity compared plant density 6 plants / m2 resulted enhancing the quality of fish rearing water led to increase the fish yield (the final and gain tilapia yield). The chemical nutrient solution provided higher plant height, fresh and dry yields of basil and mint than the aquaponic solution, as well as N, P, K, and oil content (percent) of basil and mint plants in both plant density (6 and 8 plants / m²) and in both seasons. The composition of aquaponic water as a source of nutrition was not sufficient to meet the requirements for basil and mint nutrients. The highest plant height, N, P, K, and oil content results were reported for the treatment of chemical nutrient solution + plant density 6 plants / m² while chemical nutrient solution + plant density 8 plants / m² had the highest fresh and dry yield of basil and mint. The need for increasing the food production under climate change impacts, the use of aquaponic systems for sweet basil and mint production provided food production (fish and vegetables) as well as the medicinal plants at the same time protecting the environment by avoiding the use of chemical fertilizers.