RESPON PERTUMBUHAN TANAMAN SELADA MERAH (Lactuca sativa var. crispa) PADA BERBAGAI KONSENTRASI DAN LAMA ALIRAN NUTRISI DENGAN SISTEM HIDROPONIK NFT BERBASIS MIKROKONTROLER

Red lettuce (Lactuca sativa var. Crispa) is a type of Leaf lettuce, this type of lettuce has red leaves, wide, thin and clustered and looks curly. The anthocyanin content found in plants causes this variety of lettuce to have a red color. Lettuce is one type of plant for food for the community. Lettuce is easy to find and often cultivated. The leaves of the lettuce plant contain many vitamins and minerals so that lettuce is widely used as a salad. Hydroponics comes from Latin: hydro means water and ponos means work. Hydroponics is the cultivation of plants without using soil, but using inert media such as gravel, sand, peat, vermiculite, pumice or sawdust. Hydroponics itself has various kinds of techniques, one of the most widely used hydroponic techniques is the NFT (nutrient film technique). NFT is a cultivation model by placing plant roots in a shallow layer of nutrient solution. Along with the application of hydroponic technology, several new problems arise such as less than optimal crop yields. One of the factors that influence the emergence of this problem is that the water flow rate is less controlled. One way to control the speed of water flow is by applying a microcontroller to the hydroponic system. This research was conducted at the Integrated Laboratory of the University of Muhammadiyah Malang which will be held in January - November 2020. The cultivation of red lettuce was carried out using rockwool seeding media at the Green House which is located in the UMM Integrated Laboratory. The observation variables in this study consisted of plant height, number of leaves, wet weight, dry weight, root length, stem diameter. The design used in this study was a factorial randomized block design (RAKF). This design consists of 2 factors, namely K factor (nutrient concentration) consisting of 5 levels and P (nutrient flow) consisting of 3 levels. Each treatment factor was repeated 2 times. The results showed that the good composition treatment for growing red lettuce was K0 (without nutrition), while for the long treatment of nutrient flow, it did not significantly affect the growth of red lettuce plants