Eco. Env. & Cons. 28 (November Suppl. Issue) : 2022; pp. (S237-S242) Copyright@ EM International ISSN 0971–765X Cultivation of Basil under Hydroponics with Nutrient Film Technique in Controlled Environment R. Sudha Rani* 1 , H. V. Hema Kumar 2 , A. Mani 3 , Boreddy Sreenivasula Reddy 4 and Ch. Sujani Rao 5 Dr. NTR College of Agricultural Engineering (ANGRAU), Bapatla 522 101, Andhra Pradesh, India (Received 20 March, 2022; Accepted 10 May, 2022) ABSTRACT A research work was carried out on cultivation of basil crop under hydroponics by controlling the environmental parameters at Dr. NTR College of Agricultural Engineering, Bapatla. The results of research work conducted for two seasons i.e., season_1(April and May) and season_2(August and September) on environmental parameters is presented in this paper. Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) was used in the hydroponics to increase the growth of basil crop. The environment was maintained using foggers to bring the temperature and humidity to optimum level. Using proper instrumentation, the foggers were operated to maintain these two environmental parameters. CO 2 , temperature and humidity were measured with ‘Rotronic CP11’ make instrument. Polynomial equations were fitted for the humidity and temperatures maintained inside the hydroponic polyhouse which are discussed in this paper. Key words: Hydroponics, NFT, Nutrients solution. Introduction By 2050, the global population is projected to attain 9.7 billion by demographers. Additionally, it is pre- dicted that half of the fertile land worldwide will be unusable for farming (Pardev et al., 2014). In 1960, with 3 billion population over the World, per capita land was 0.5 ha but presently, with 6 billion people it is only 0.25 ha and by 2050, it will reach to 0.16 ha. Urbanization, natural disasters, climate change, and the indiscriminate application of herbicides and pes- ticides, all of which are reducing land fertility cur- rently affecting soil-based agriculture. Soil-based agriculture is facing some major challenges; most importantly decrease in per capita land availability. To overcome these problems, now-a-days, soilless culture technique was developed and commercially introduced for intensive production of horticultural crops, particularly vegetables under polyhouse con- dition. However, in almost all the systems, soil as growing media are replaced with other media mostly due to plant protection concerns regarding soil borne pathogens as well as environmental regu- lations against ground water pollution with nitrate and pesticides. Removing soil from production sys- tem can provide number of advantages in the man- agement of both plant nutrition and protection com- pared to conventional soil-based production sys- tems. Hydroponic farming is currently gaining popularity around the world due to its effective re- source management and high-quality food produc- tion. Hydroponics is a technique of growing plants without using the soil, grow in nutrient rich solu- tion. The term Hydroponics was derived from the Greek words hydro’ means water and ponos’ means labour and literally means water work. The word hydroponics was coined by Professor William DOI No.: http://doi.org/10.53550/EEC.2022.v28i07s.039