Introduction of Soilless Farming
摘要
Worldwide, traditional, and herbal medicines have been essential to health and utilized to cure numerous acute and chronic diseases with negligible or very less adverse effects. Medicinal plants (MPs) abundant in bioactive molecules known as secondary metabolites, including alkaloids, flavonoids, and terpenoids, have been applied to treat diseases due to their diverse therapeutic potential. For the commercial level production of herbal, medicinal, cosmetic, and food companies rely entirely on naturally grown plants or standard agricultural procedures. An increasing need for MPs, along with concerns about their quality, purity, consistency, and sustainability, has necessitated a re-evaluation of traditional production methods. Soilless agriculture, including hydroponics, aeroponics, aquaponics, and vertical farming, provides revolutionary approaches for MPs and biomass production. Automated conditions inside these high-tech advanced cultivation techniques can enhance the uniformity, concentration, and yield of secondary metabolites in MPs by facilitating precise regulation of environmental parameters, including lighting, temperature, humidity, pH, and electrical conductivity. Integration of soilless agriculture with computer technology and artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance automation, yield estimation, nutrient delivery, and disease prediction and diagnosis. To meet the standard grade biomass requirements by industrial guidelines, these advanced techniques represent the most effective farming approaches for rapidly increasing plant and biomass production quality. This book chapter aims to elucidate recent advancements in soilless agriculture and the integration of AI and computer technology to produce MPs used in the medicinal, cosmetic, and food industries.