Abstract
Many arid and semiarid regions of the world face serious water shortages that are projected to have significant adverse impacts on irrigated agriculture and create unprecedented challenges for providing food and water security for the rapidly growing human population in a changing global climate. Consequently, there is a momentous incentive to shift to more resource-efficient soilless greenhouse production systems. Though there is considerable empirical and theoretical research devoted to specific issues related to control and management of soilless culture systems, a comprehensive approach that quantitatively considers relevant physicochemical processes within containerized soilless growth modules is missing. An important first step towards development of advanced soilless culture management strategies is a comprehensive characterization of hydraulic and physicochemical substrate properties. In this study we applied state-of-the-art measurement techniques to characterize six soilless substrates and substrate mixtures [i.e., coconut coir, perlite, volcanic tuff, perlite/coconut coir (50/50 vol.-%), tuff/coconut coir (70/30 vol.-%), and Growstone®/coconut coir (50/50 vol.-%)] that are used in commercial production in Israel and the United States. The measured substrate properties include water retention characteristics, saturated hydraulic conductivity, packing and particle densities, as well as phosphorus and ammonium adsorption isotherms. In addition, integral water availability and integral energy parameters were calculated to compare investigated substrates and provide valuable information for irrigation and fertigation management.
Highlights
The projected growth of the world population to around 9.7 billion by 2050 [1] poses unprecedented challenges for providing and sustaining food and water security and mitigating associated economic inequalities and social tensions that threaten global security [2,3]
It should be noted that the choice of soilless substrates and the selection of measured substrate properties was guided by ongoing production-scale greenhouse trials and the goal to utilize the obtained properties to parameterize a three-dimensional numerical code for simulation of water and nutrient dynamics in containerized growth modules to aid with their design and management
A thorough physicochemical and hydraulic characterization of six soilless substrates and substrate mixtures that were selected based on ongoing greenhouse trials was presented
Summary
The projected growth of the world population to around 9.7 billion by 2050 [1] poses unprecedented challenges for providing and sustaining food and water security and mitigating associated economic inequalities and social tensions that threaten global security [2,3]. This is further exacerbated by climate change via alterations of precipitation patterns, more likely occurrence of climate extremes (e.g., prolonged droughts), and modification of diurnal and seasonal temperature regimes [4] and soil degradation that leads to an alarming reduction of arable land. Organic substrates that are extensively used in soilless culture include peat moss, compost, coconut coir, bark and other wood-based materials, and biochar, all of which are commonly mixed with inorganic substrates such as perlite, volcanic tuff, expanded clay granules, pumice, zeolite, and sand, in order to improve their physicochemical properties [8,9]
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