Soilless Farming: A Method to Produce Quality Vegetables

Abstract

Soilless farming is an emerging technology utilized to production quality vegetables. The conventional open-field vegetable cultivation needs area, water sources, equipment, and optimal weather condition. In urban areas conventional vegetable cultivation practices is difficult due to limited space, limited fertile arable land and soil is less accessible for plant growth. These issues can be overcome by soil-less cultivation. Soilless farming technology helps in conservation of water and other resources and produce quality vegetables. Soilless farming classified in the four viz., hydroponics, aeroponics, aquaponics and substrate culture. Hydroponics is a method to grow a plant under water-based nutrients solution. Hydroponics system of vegetable cultivation consumes 60% less fertilizers than traditional methods. Aeroponics system plants are suspended in the air and roots are sprayed with a liquid moist nutrient. Aeroponics system widely used in vegetable crops including tomato, lettuce, cucumber, potato, yams, and leafy vegetables. In aquaponics system, farm waste effectively utilized by fish as nutrient source and nutrient-enriched water from the fish tank is used to feed the crop plants. Substrate culture or media are widely used in greenhouse cultivation and container-grown vegetables such as tomato, cucumber, capsicum, lettuce, and leafy greens. Commercial vegetables production using substrate culture such as coir, perlite, rock wool, and vermiculite are used alone or in combination. Soilless farming helps to produce high quality vegetables in the protected cultivation to meet the growing vegetables demand in the global market.