@article{594, abstract = {Vertical farming is of major interest in research and development to enable the production of food in the quantity sufficient for the growing world population under the weather conditions, which are increasingly becoming more and more extreme. Especially in cities, vertical farming allows for growing vegetables and other plants locally. Apart from industrial applications of vertical farming, new ideas are being developed to make cities “greener”, often related to the maker culture. In the study, we concentrated on the second approach by investigating the possibilities to grow plants on textile fabrics placed vertically, e.g. along a balcony railing, but also as structural elements in agricultural areas. Our investigations revealed, using the example of cress, that steadily irrigated knitted fabrics enable plant growth on them, indicating no significant differences between differently knitted stitch dimensions and different illumination intensities. Finally, we discuss the possibilities to measure the time-resolved plant growth reliably and suggest additional possibilities to evaluate the growth success.}, author = {Böttjer, Robin and Storck, Jan Lukas and Vahle, Dominik and Brockhagen, Bennet and Grothe, Timo and Herbst, Sabine and Dietz, Karl-Josef and Rattenholl, Anke and Gudermann, Frank and Ehrmann, Andrea}, journal = {Tekstilec}, keywords = {vertical farming, textile fabrics, plant growth, knitted fabrics, hydroponics, measurement technology, cress, illumination, irrigation}, number = {3}, pages = {200--207}, title = {{Influence of Textile and Environmental Parameters on Plant Growth on Vertically Mounted Knitted Fabrics}}, doi = {10.14502/Tekstilec2019.62.200-207}, volume = {62}, year = {2019}, } @article{614, abstract = { Vertical farming is one of the suggested avenues for producing food for the growing world population. Concentrating the cultivation of crops such as herbs in large indoor farms makes food production susceptible to technical, biological or other problems that might destroy large amounts of food at once. Thus, there is a trend towards locally, self-sufficient food production in vertical systems on a small scale. Our study examined whether conventional knitted fabrics, such as patches of worn jackets, can be used for hydroponics instead of the specialized nonwoven materials used in large-scale indoor systems. To this end, seed germination and seedling growth of 14 different crop plant species on knitted fabrics with three different stitch sizes were compared. Our results showed that hydroponic culture on knitted fabrics are indeed possible and allow for growing a broad spectrum of plant species, suggesting recycling of old textile fabrics for this purpose. Among the 14 plant species studied, differences in germination success, average fresh and dry masses, as well as water contents were found, but these parameters were not affected by knitted fabric stitch size. }, author = {Storck, Jan Lukas and Böttjer, Robin and Vahle, Dominik and Brockhagen, Bennet and Grothe, Timo and Dietz, Kar-Josef and Rattenholl, Anke and Gudermann, Frank and Ehrmann, Andrea}, journal = {Horticulturae }, keywords = {vertical farming, plant growth, textile fabrics, knitted fabrics, hydroponics}, number = {4}, publisher = {MDPI}, title = {{ Seed Germination and Seedling Growth on Knitted Fabrics as New Substrates for Hydroponic Systems }}, doi = {10.3390/horticulturae5040073}, volume = {5}, year = {2019}, }