Vegetable Nursery Management: Foundation of Successful Production System
摘要
Vegetables are integral part of human diet as they contain carbohydrates, protein, dietary fiber, minerals, vitamins, and bioactive compounds. The expansion in cultivated area under vegetable crops with increased production is the dire need to meet food requirements of expanding population around the globe. Currently, unavailability of reliable, true to type vegetable seedlings is one of the major problems to achieve this goal. On the other hand, nursery industry in most of the developing countries is lacking modern facilities to meet the international standards for good quality and quantity of plant produce. Lack of awareness about modern technologies used in vegetable nursery production aggravates the existing problems. Nursery workers are still using conventional methods to grow plants. Vegetable quality entirely depends on health of seedlings which are shifted from nurseries to vegetable fields. Seedlings produced using conventional methods are mostly under the biotic and abiotic stresses. Therefore, to provide true to type, healthy, and disease-free seedlings to the growers, it is imperative that the nursery should be established by adopting modern and advanced technologies. Information on nursery types, growth media, nutrient management, and disease and insect-pest management will not only help in production of healthy seedlings but also make the growers well-off. This chapter is aimed to provide guidelines to raise vegetable seedlings using modern techniques and will also serve as a valuable reference for anyone involved in nursery production.