Paper presented at the 52nd CFCS Annual Meeting, Guadeloupe, July 10-16, 2016
Figure 6. Bar chart of average number of leaves in full sunlight versus shaded conditions From four data set collected, values from the shaded conditions were consistently higher than those from full sunlight conditions; fresh weight- 11.89 g versus 4.94 g; dry weight- 0.83 g versus 0.49 g; stem length- 17.60 cm versus 10.68 cm and number of leaves- 17 versus 15. Water temperature may be having an effect on growth, since water temperatures between full sunlight and shaded conditions differs by 3 and 4.5 oC in morning and afternoons periods respectively. Also the visual appearance and texture of the watercress grown in shaded conditions of the re-circulating system is better than that of the watercress grown in full sunlight and resembles the watercress produced in large scale systems more closely.
Figure 7: Photograph showing watercress grown under shade condition versus that grown in full sunlight References McHugh, J.J., Fukada,S.K. and Takeda,K.Y., (1987) Hawaii Watercress Production Available at: http://www.ctahr. hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/RES-088.pdf Stephens, J.M., (2015) Watercress—Nasturtium officinale R. Br. Available at: https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/mv151
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