Crop Hydroponics, Phyto-hydroponics, Crop Production, and Factors Affecting Soilless Culture

Soilless culture is emerging as a popular tool to grow agricultural and horticultural crops in open systems, closed systems, protected cultivation, vertical farming, and soil affected or stress-affected areas. The climatic factors and biometabolism are integrated in stimulating quality phenological growth and biochemical and physiological processes in soilless crop production. Soilless crop production (SCP) has immense potential to build a soilless green revolution and for sustaining crop production. Information on substrate and water based culture collected for the period from 1996 to 2022 is reviewed and analyzed in this work. The performance of crops in soilless culture improves morphological and physiological parameters compared with soil based cultivation. The distinct environmental factors positively influence soilless culture to exhibit cellular processes, biological processes, molecular processes, and the ecosystem in the crop. The impacts of ecological factors are more efficient in closed systems compared with open systems. The salient features of metabolites and biometabolism in substrate based media were identified with transcriptome analysis and found to be different compared with soil based cultivation. Developing simple nutrient formulations suited for soilless culture is essential to popularize this technology among marginal farmers.