Study of a bacterial community in the aquaponic closed-loop system of Gembloux Agro Bio-Tech

An aquaponic system comprises an aquaculture compartment and a hydroponic compartment.
Its main advantages are the use of the nutrient enriched water from the aquaculture compartment to fertilise the vegetable crops instead of using chemical fertilisers and the recycling of this enriched water which avoids polluting surface and groundwater.
Besides the plants and fish, microorganisms are also key players in aquaponics as they participate in processes as essential as nitrification and solubilisation of the organic matter.
This study aims at characterizing the bacteria present in the aquaponic system of Gembloux Agro Bio-Tech to better understand the composition and role of their communities in aquaponics.
The studied aquaponic system is composed of one loop in which water from two tilapia tanks is pumped through a lamellar settler, a microbeads biofilter and up to a greenhouse containing raft hydroponics.
Bacteria were sampled from two compartments of the system, namely the pipe going to the hydroponic compartment and the biofilter.
Sampling was repeated thrice in the course of three weeks to observe whether the composition of the communities would evolve.
DNA was extracted and sequenced with Illumina technology.
The sequences were analyzed with the QIIME software.
Results show that the pipe going to the hydroponic compartment and biofilter host different bacteria communities with the community of the biofilter being much more diverse.
No evolution was noticed over the three weeks’ test.

XXX International Horticultural Congress IHC2018: II International Symposium on Soilless Culture and VIII International Symposium on Seed, Transplant and Stand Establishment of Horticultural Crops

M. Eck, S. Massart, M.H. Jijakli

aquaponics, bacterial communities, diversity, 16S rRNA, NGS

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2020.1273.17