Judul: Pengembangan zone cooling system untuk produksi benih kentang secara aeroponik di dataran rendah tropika basah
Abstrak: Potato plant (Solanum tuberosum L) is one of the major food crops in the world after paddy, wheat, and corn. Carbohydrate content of potato is very high; therefore, it can be used to substitute rice, wheat flour, and maize. As one of the most important commodities, potato has comparative and competitive advantages, as well as good domestic and export market. However in Indonesia, the volume of potato production is lower than the volume of potato consumption. Therefore, Indonesia is importing potato from other countries. To increase potato production, Indonesia is facing difficulties in fulfilling the required potato seeds with high quality, right time and right variety. Using low quality potato seeds causes low productivity. In addition, increasing potato production is also facing problems related to the decrease in area for potato plant in highland, pest and plant diseases. In Indonesia, potato plant is generally cultivated on highland. This is very often accompanied by high rate in soil erosion. Shifting the orientation for potato cultivation to lowland is one of the most prospective solutions to increase potato production while solving the problems related to soil erosion. However, potato cultivation in humid tropical lowland is facing problems related to high air temperature and humidity. To overcome these problems, root zone cooling for aeroponically grown potato cultivation could be used. Zone cooling system could decrease temperature of certain zone but it also prevents the increase in air humidity. The objective of this research in general was to develop technology for aeroponically grown potato seed production in humid tropical lowland by using root zone cooling. To achieve the objective, three stages of research were conducted: (1) to apply zone cooling in aeroponic system for potato seed production in humid tropical lowland, (2) to predict temperature distribution in the growth chamber of aeroponic system with root zone cooling, (3) to calculate the heat load in the growth chamber of aeroponic system with root zone cooling. The research on zone cooling application was conducted in a greenhouse at the Department of Mechanical & Bio-system Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Bogor Agricultural University, at 250 m above the sea level, from April to July, 2012. The size of the aeroponic chamber used was 1.5 m x 1 m x 1 m. The material used for the outer wall of the chamber was wooden multiplex board and the inner side was insulated with styrofoam board. Plant bedding was made of styrofoam board. Plant spacing was 15 cm x 15 cm. Therefore, one chamber consisted of 45 plants. The variety of potato seedling was Granola, produced by tissue culture laboratory, Vegetable Research Institute, Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture, after acclimatization. The research results indicated that the values of average height and number of leave of the potato plant cultivated in aeroponic system with zone cooling were higher than that of without cooling. The best tubers were obtained in aeroponic system with 10 °C zone cooling, i.e., average productivity (579 tubers/m2), average number of tuber (14.85 tubers/plant), and average tuber weight (409.15 mg/tuber). The 15 °C zone cooling resulted in 55
Keyword: potato, humid tropical lowland, aeroponics, zone cooling, CFD