Soilless Culture

Soilless culture also known as water based culture and substrate based culture has immense potential to grow tissue cultured plants in a closed and controlled environment system. This review analyzes the various factors that affect the vegetative growth, reproductive growth, metabolic processes, and gene regulatory functions of tissue cultured plants and the suitability of soilless culture for tissue culture plants. Experiments show that morphological and reproductive abnormalities are mitigated in tissue cultured plants by gene regulation in a closed and controlled environment system...

Due to the edaphoclimatic conditions in southeast Spain, which are expected to worsen due to climate change, more efficient ways of using water must be found to maintain sustainable agriculture. Due to the current high price of irrigation control systems in southern Europe, 60-80% of soilless crops are still irrigated, based on the experience of the grower or advisor. The hypothesis of this work is that the development of a low-cost, high-performance control system will allow small farmers to improve the efficiency of water use by obtaining better control of soilless crops...

UNLABELLED: Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi is a valuable medicinal plant of the Lamiaceae family. The roots, Scutellariae baicalensis radix , are valued in the traditional medicine of East Asia and are also listed in several pharmacopeias, such as the Chinese and European versions. The roots contain a high amount of flavones, such as baicalein, wogonin and their glucuronides, baicalin and wogonoside, respectively, with rare structures of unsubstituted B-ring. These major constituents are responsible for its pharmacological activity, mainly anti-inflammatory, antiviral, and antitumor, as well as BDZ-receptor modulating...

Several factors influence the quality of melon fruits and foliar fertilizer application is one method for improving their quality. The objectives of this study were: (1) to investigate the response of commercial melon varieties to a soilless culture system in Nakhon Si Thammarat Province, Thailand, and (2) to evaluate the quality of melon fruit under various foliar fertilizer treatments. The experiment was arranged as a completely randomized block design with four replications. Eight commercial melon varieties, including four orange pulp melons (Sandee, Baramee, Sanwan, and Melon cat 697) and four green pulp melons (Kissme, Snowgreen, Melon Princess, and Kimoji), were used in this study...

Salinity negatively affects agricultural production by reducing crop growth and yield. Botanical biostimulants can be used as innovative and sustainable tools to cope with abiotic stress. In this study, salicylic acid (SA) (25 µM) and willow leaf (WL) (0.1 and 0.2%) and bark (WB) (0.1 and 0.2%) extracts were applied as plant-based biostimulants to hydroponically grown maize in the absence and presence of salinity stress (60 mM NaCl). The hormone-like activity and mineral composition of willow extracts were analyzed, and the effects of willow extracts on growth parameters, chlorophyll content, antioxidative enzyme activities, protein levels and mineral nutrient concentrations of maize plants were measured...

Hydroponics is one of the systems in agriculture which reinforce productivity by controlling environmental and growing conditions. In this study, we evaluated the effect of three bio-fertilizers, namely bacteria, micro-algae, and mycorrhiza, on basil leaf yield and quality (Ocimum basilicum L.) in a floating culture system. Soil has rich amounts of beneficial microorganisms, supporting plant nutrition, producing phytohormones, controlling phytopathogens, and improving soil structure. However, soilless culture usually contains no beneficial microorganisms if we do not include them in the system...

Different shoot/root micro-environments were investigated for growth performances and nutraceutical compounds in leaves of mulberry ( Morus alba L.) transplants. Single-node segments were taken from seedling-grown pots of three cultivars: Myanmar large leaf (MLL), Myanmar medium leaf (MML), and C14. Transplant production was compared in soil, vermiculite (V), or the dynamic root floating technique (DRFT). The highest survival percentage of the transplants was obtained from V-system, and MLL showed a higher shoot/root formation over two tested cultivars...

Aquaponics is defined as a sustainable and integrated system that combines fish aquaculture and hydroponic plant production in the same recirculated water loop. A recent study using high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies highlighted that microbial communities from an aquaponic system could control one of the most problematic pathogens in soilless lettuce culture, namely, Pythium aphanidermatum. Therefore, this study aims at isolating the microorganisms responsible for this biocontrol action. Based on the most promising genera identified by HTS, an innovative strategy for isolating and testing original biocontrol agents from aquaponic water was designed to control P...

Soilless culture has been widely used in horticultural plant production, but little research has been done on bryophyte. In this study, we selected a cultivation substrate mixed and proportioned with garden soil, granular soil, grass charcoal soil, general-purpose nutrient soil, and decomposed grade II, III, and IV fallen wood of Pinus massoniana as the raw materials of soilless substrate to investigate its effects on the growth and physiology of Plagiomnium acutum. The results showed that the total porosity, water-holding porosity, and water-holding capacity of the mixed substrate containing fallen wood of P...

Soilless culture systems (SCS) play an increasing role in greenhouse vegetable production. In the SCS, soilless substrates serve as the major substitute for soil, supplying nutrients to plants but releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Remarkably, there is a serious problem of N2 O emission due to excessive input of N fertilizer. However, the microbial processes of N2 O production and consumption in soilless substrates have been rarely studied resulting in difficultly interpreting for its global warming potential...

Vaccinium corymbosum L. is a woody deciduous shrub belonging to the Ericaceae family. During the last decade, Northern Italy has become a major area for blueberry cultivation and production in Europe, supplying other countries with high quality fruit (FAOSTAT 2020). In June 2020, plant stem and branch wilting with brownish necrotic internal lesions were observed on 20% of around 250 plants of the cultivar (cv.) Draper cultivated in a soilless culture system located in Peveragno (Piedmont, Cuneo Province, 44°21'05...

Hydrogels are attractive soilless media for plant cultivation with strong water and nutrient retention. However, pristine hydrogels contain mostly ultra-micro pores and lack air-filled porosity for root zone aeration. Herein we report a porous hydrogel composite comprising an agarose network and porous growing mix particle (GMP) fillers. The agarose backbone allowed the composite to sustain a 12-d growth cycle for red cabbage microgreens without the need for watering or crew interaction. Moreover, the GMP induced greater total pore volume and increased the prevalence of pores >30 μm by 8-fold...

The application of highly porous and 3D interconnected microcellular polyelectrolyte polyHIPE (PE-PH) monoliths based on (3-acrylamidopropyl)-trimethylammonium chloride as soilless cultivation substrates for in vitro embryo culture is discussed. The embryo axes isolated from chickpea seeds are inoculated onto the surface of the monoliths and allowed to germinate. Germination study show that the newly disclosed PE-PH substrate performs much better than the conventionally used agar as the germination percentage, shoot and root length, fresh and dry weight as well as the number of leaves are enhanced...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Se has beneficial effects on plants, through the stimulation of plant productivity, the reduction of abiotic stresses, and the improvement in N metabolism. Therefore, we investigated the effect of the foliar application of different concentrations of Se (0, 4, 8 and 16 μmol L-1 ) on lettuce plants grown in an aquaponics system (fish water) compared with a control (conventional soilless fertigation). The NO3 - concentration supplied by the fish water was 47% of the control solution. The results showed a reduction in the fresh weight of lettuce plants irrigated with the fish water mixture treatment, along with an increase in sugar concentration...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Vetiver ( Chrysopogon zizanioides (L.) Roberty) is a major tropical perfume crop. Access to its essential oil (EO)-filled roots is nevertheless cumbersome and land-damaging. This study, therefore, evaluated the potential of vetiver cultivation under soilless high-pressure aeroponics (HPA) for volatile organic compound (VOC) production. The VOC accumulation in the roots was investigated by transmission electron microscopy, and the composition of these VOCs was analyzed by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC/MS) after sampling by headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME)...

The cellulose content in vegetable waste (VW) is high and cannot be directly digested by black soldier fly larvae (BSFL). In this study, in order to treat VW using BSFL composting, kitchen waste (KW) is used as the only nutritional supplement for VW to analyze the effects of the different contents of crude protein (CP), crude fat (EE), carbohydrate (3C), compost thickness (CT), and treatment time on the larval weight (LW), survival rate (SR), dry matter reduction rate (DMR), bioconversion rate (BCR), physical and chemical properties of BSFL sand and changes in the microbial community...

Hebes ( Veronica spp. in the section Hebe ) are ornamental perennials and shrubs grown for their flowers and symmetric, evergreen leaves. They are uncommon in U.S. horticulture and are only produced by a few nurseries regionally (Oregon and Washington). In June, July, and August (2016 to 2021), stems on 1 to 5-year-old Veronica cupressoides , V. ochracea , and V. pinguifolia in five landscape plantings around Benton County, OR (17 plants total, locations 2 to 37 km apart) began to wilt, turn brown, and die...

Following legalisation, cannabis has quickly become an important horticultural crop in Canada and increasingly so in other parts of the world. However, due to previous legal restrictions on cannabis research there are limited scientific data on the relationship between nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) supply (collectively: NPK) and the crop yield and quality. This study examined the response of a high delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) Cannabis sativa cultivar grown in deep-water culture with different nutrient solution treatments varying in their concentrations (mg L-1 ) of N (70, 120, 180, 250, 290), P (20, 40, 60, 80, 100), and K (60, 120, 200, 280, 340) according to a central composite design...