ABSTRACT
Up to now, strawberry cultivation on a large scale for commercial purposes has been practised in soils in fields with conventional techniques of crop management, which had to address issues such as the environment, season, availability of land and manual labourers near large cities and phytosanitary standards. As a result, strawberry production in a soilless culture system has slowly become popular and nowadays it is being advocated across the strawberry-growing world. A well-organized soilless strawberry production system largely addresses these issues and helps minimize the problems associated with pests and disease management to a great extent. In traditional protected cultivation such as poly-tunnels, the cost of construction is very high and, therefore, high-value crops such as strawberries are an ideal choice for such typically specialized systems. Until recently, growers depended largely on methyl bromide to sterilize the soil before planting strawberries to minimize the problems associated with soilborne insect-pests and fungal diseases in the culture system. Bans and restricted use of agrochemicals/fumigants warranted a need to search for alternative methods for management of soilborne biotic stresses in new production systems, such as soilless culture referred to as “hydroponics”. Worldwide, soilless crop production has increased significantly in recent years because of certain advantages, for example, environmental control, extended growing season, higher marketable yields, better-quality produce, efficient use of water and fertilizers and facilitated management of biotic stresses for enhanced yield and profit. Soilless strawberry production system provides an important alternative for an environmentally friendly, efficient and sustainable growing system for extended period or round the year production of strawberries. This way, the need for agrochemicals for sterilizing the soils for culture of strawberries can be minimized. Many commercial growers have preferred production of strawberries in “hydroponics” and slowly switched over to this system of cultivation. Soilless strawberry cultivation comparatively increases the produce quality and productivity of the crop resulting in enhanced incomes and competitive strawberry production system.
