ABSTRACT
Sawdust culture was particularly popular during the introduction of soilless culture in the 1970s in British Columbia, Canada. This was due to the large forest industry in the West Coast of Canada and the Pacic Northwest of the United States. Sawdust was, at that time, a waste material of sawmills and was burnt to dispose of it. The sawdust had no value and could be obtained from sawmills for the cost of trucking it to the greenhouse site. In British Columbia, Canada, the Canada Department of Agriculture Research Station at Saanichton carried out extensive research for a number of years to develop a sawdust-culture system for greenhouse crops (Maas and Adamson, 1971; Mason and Adamson, 1973). The need for a soilless-culture system became evident with increased soilborne nematode infestations and diseases coupled with poor soil structure, which made the prots from greenhouse crops very marginal. Over the next few decades in British Columbia, over 90% of all greenhouses used some form of soilless culture for vegetable and ower production. Vegetable growers usually used sawdust culture, while ower producers used a peat-sand-perlite mixture.
