Soilless culture

• Soilless culture can be defined as “any method of growing plants without the use of soil as a rooting medium, in which the inorganic nutrients absorbed by the roots are supplied via the irrigation water”
• The fertilizers containing the nutrients to be supplied to the crop are dissolved in the appropriate concentration in the irrigation water and the resultant solution is referred to as “nutrient solution”
• In soilless crops, the plant roots may grow either in porous media (substrates), which are frequently irrigated with nutrient solution, or directly in nutrient solution without any solid phase.
• In recent decades, supplying nutrient solution to plants to optimize crop nutrition (fertigation or liquid fertilization) has become routine cultural practice, not only in soilless culture but also in soil grown greenhouse crops.
• Hence, the drastically restricted volume of the rooting medium and its uniformity are the only characteristics of soilless cultivated crops differentiating them from crops grown in the soil.