Reveal the truth of soilless planting

In Europe, such as the Netherlands, Denmark and other countries and regions, greenhouse vegetables, flowers have a considerable part of the use of soilless culture produced, and in the Netherlands has restricted the use of soil cultivation vegetables, because the use of sudden cultivation will pollute groundwater, thus polluting the environment, while the soil will in turn pollute plants. Soilless culture is a completely closed system with controllable risks and no pollution to the environment, so it has been strongly advocated. So what is soilless culture technology?

What is soilless culture?

Soilless culture method is also called nutrient culture method and hydroponic method. It is a special cultivation method that does not use soil and manure when planting crops, and generally only uses nutrient solution prepared by chemical reagents to supply nutrients needed by crops. It is not only a method for crop cultivation in the laboratory, but also a research means for crop cultivation experiments in the laboratory. It is generally carried out in a relatively closed indoor environment, so the chance of infection by pests and diseases is very small, and pesticides are rarely applied, so pollution-free and pollution-free crops can be planted.

Second, the advantages of soilless culture

Soilless culture has made outstanding contributions to the development of modern agriculture. The main reason is that compared with traditional agriculture, soilless culture can effectively break away from the dependence of agriculture on soil, reduce labor intensity and thus liberate more labor force. At the same time, soilless culture can make more sufficient use of water and fertilizer, reduce the impact of diseases and insect pests, and improve crop yield, thus promoting the development process of mechanized agriculture. The following are specific advantages of soilless culture.

(1) The most prominent advantage of soilless culture is that it is free from the limitations of soil. Soilless culture has changed the traditional concept of "everything grows in the soil" and soil farming methods. Crops can be grown in places that are not suitable for farming, such as sand, barren land and even spacecraft. In homes and offices, windowsills, balconies, corridors, roofs and other vacant areas can be used to grow plants. The soilless culture technique has been successfully applied to produce high yield and high quality vegetables on the abandoned site of Shengli Oilfield and saline soil in Shouguang City, Shandong Province.

(2) Soilless culture can obviously reduce labor intensity and expand the efficiency of water and fertilizer use. Soilless cultivation does not need complicated links such as cultivation, weeding, soil disinfection and topdressing in traditional farming, and the scale of unit labor management can be greatly increased and the labor intensity is obviously reduced. Micro-pipe irrigation system is generally used for water and fertilizer supply in nutrient solution culture, which is easy to implement fixed point and localization, and can obviously reduce the waste of water and fertilizer. The experiment proves that the fertilizer utilization rate is increased by 20%~30% compared with soil culture by 3~7 times of water saving.

(3) Soilless culture reduces the impact of crop diseases and insect pests. Soilless culture can prevent the occurrence of various malignant diseases transmitted by soil-borne pathogens, cut off an important transmission channel of diseases and insect pests; in addition, due to artificial improvement of the rhizosphere microenvironment, promote the growth of strong plants, enhance their own disease resistance, avoid soil salinization and continuous cropping caused by salt accumulation for many years in soil culture. At the same time, the disinfection of substrate is more economical and convenient than soil disinfection.

(4) Soilless culture greatly improved crop yield. In countries and regions with mature soilless culture technology, the yield per unit area was 0.4~20 times higher than that of soil culture (depending on crops, generally between 2~4 times). The experimental demonstration results in China were also more than 30%.

(5) Soilless culture is helpful to improve the automation level of agricultural production. Soilless culture fully demonstrates that agriculture can produce crops mechanically and automatically, just like industrial production, and plant growth can be completely controlled manually. Now there are fully automated soilless culture facilities and three-dimensional soilless culture factories in the world.

Disadvantages of soilless culture

Soilless culture has its advantages and potentialities, but it also has some disadvantages in large-scale application and popularization. Such as one-time facilities investment is large; the nature of various substrates is not known in detail; nutrient solution management is technical and difficult.

IV. Application of soilless culture

The one-time investment per 667 m2 and annual operating cost of soilless culture organic ecotype soilless culture system are shown in Table 1 (excluding the investment for building greenhouse or greenhouse). Table 1 shows that the one-time investment of organic ecotype soilless culture system is about 300 yuan/667 square meters, and the annual production cost (including labor) is about 4300 yuan/667 square meters.

Take tomato as an example, the annual output per 667 square meters is 15,000 kg, according to the average unit price of 1.5 yuan/kg in the general market, the total income is: 1.5×1.5= 22,500 yuan, after deducting the production cost of 4,300 yuan, the net income is about 18,200 yuan/year/667 square meters. Such as high-end vegetable prices, sold to high-end restaurants, hotels or exports. Production and profits should be higher.

Summary: Soilless culture technology provides a new way of thinking for grain planting to some extent, but it has not been popularized on a large scale as far as the current technology is concerned. The reason lies in its obvious shortcomings, many detailed characteristics of soilless culture are not known to people, and the development time is not as long as traditional agriculture. Each technology is far from reaching the level of mass production. Meanwhile, the management technology for nutrient solution culture is demanding and is not suitable for large-scale popularization in rural areas. It is still in the experimental phase. However, it is certain that soilless culture technology will definitely occupy a place in future agricultural output, and with a more sound market system, it will eventually achieve certain economic benefits.