Soilless Cultivation: A Distinct Vision for Sustainable Agriculture

In agriculture, the declining availability of cultivated land combined with an increase adverse climatic conditions has resulted in a considerable number of crops, particularly vegetables, being grown using protected soilless farming techniques. Any method that allows plants to be grown without using soil as a rooting medium and supply of vital nutrients through irrigation water is said to be soilless cultivation. Soilless farming provides advanced approaches for sustainable agricultural productionProduction” , soil protection, and other high-tech industrial techniques. Furthermore, in order to supply people with sufficient and high-quality food, the modern plant cultivation practices are now being used which include hydroponics, aeroponics, and aquaponics. These contemporary methods of cultivating crops usually combine nutrient solutions with inert organic or inorganic growing substrates to escalate the yield and productionProduction” of crops. Therefore, in case of hydroponics, all the essential nutrients are provided via various mediums such as rockwool, hydroton, and perlite for various crops like leaf lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, etc. While aeroponics is a variation of hydroponics, plants are suspended, with roots being intermittently sprayed with a nutrient solution by an automated sprinkler system connected to the main nutrient reservoir, with efficiency and precision. Lot of vegetables and fruits like beets, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, potato, tomatoes, and watermelon are cultivated by this method. This approach is used to cultivate a variety of vegetables and fruits, including beets, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, and watermelon. Moreover, the merging of fish farming and hydroponics is known as aquaponics, which is regarded as an effective and sustainable technique of growing cannabis for tomatoes, cucumbers, capsicum, red salad onions, Chinese cabbage, lettuce, bell peppers, and snow peas. Thus, in this chapter, we will discuss distinct soilless culture methods that offer advanced method of farming crops in comparison to conventional soil culture.