Growing Plants in Soilless Culture: Operational Conclusions

The previous chapters present various specific facets of soilless plant production, representing the state of the art and include some perspectives on the direction in which the field is moving. In some cases, gaps in knowledge were pointed out and required future research was suggested. Generally the chapters focus on particular facets of a system whose full complexity was beyond the scope of each specific chapter. In some cases lack of appreciation of the complexity imposed by the interaction of all the factors may lead to problems and failures for practitioners. The aim of this final chapter is to integrate various concepts from throughout the book and from other sources, to provide practitioners with practical operational tools, allowing them to optimize crop production. The focus is to develop a better understanding of the intricate processes taking place within the system along the root zone–plant–atmosphere continuum, as affected by the interactions among the growing substrate, the liquid and gaseous phases