Comprehensive guide to soilless plant culture.

This open access book, written by world experts in aquaponics and related technologies, provides the authoritative and comprehensive overview of the key aquaculture and hydroponic and other integrated systems, socio-economic and environmental aspects. Aquaponic systems, which combine aquaculture and vegetable food production offer alternative technology solutions for a world that is increasingly under stress through population growth, urbanisation, water shortages, land and soil degradation, environmental pollution, world hunger and climate change.

The eighth edition of Hydroponic Food Production: A Definitive Guidebook for the Advanced Home Gardener and the Commercial Hydroponic Grower serves as a comprehensive guide to soilless culture (hydroponics) for hobby and commercial growers. Extensively updated from the seventh edition published in 2013, this bestseller is a "methods" book to show the reader how to set up a hydroponic operation with the options of using any of many hydroponic cultures presently used in the industry to grow vegetable crops. Written by Dr Howard M. Resh, a recognized authority worldwide on hydroponics, the book presents detailed information on hydroponic growing systems and features more than 600 photographs (200 in full color), drawings, and tables. New to this edition: Presents greenhouse environmental control systems and examples of sustainable greenhouse technology, and demonstrates uses of automation and robotics in harvesting, grading, and packing. Introduces indoor vertical farming, and vertical growing systems, as well as the expansion of tropical hydroponics and rooftop greenhouses. Provides information on automation in large-scale raft culture and nutrient film technique (NFT) operations in the growing of lettuce, leafy greens, and herbs. A new chapter 12 discusses control of environmental factors in greenhouses. It covers information on systems to regulate temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide enrichment, lighting, and fertigation with examples of sustainable greenhouse technology. This chapter demonstrates automation in the regulation of the greenhouse environment to crop production methods with emphasis on robotics in harvesting to transporting, grading, and packing equipment. The use of retractable roof structures in tropical, humid climates is an alternative for growing greenhouse crops. A new chapter 14 describes vertical indoor farming. It presents background information on early vertical greenhouses and sack culture systems to present vertical systems used by greenhouses and existing vertical greenhouses and future concepts. Vertical indoor farming reviews systems of vertical tiers of shelving growing lettuce, leafy greens, and herbs under LED lighting in large warehouses. The chapter exemplifies automation in these vertical farms with each specific system and it contains information on vertical growing in containers and/or modular units. Chapter 15 contains new information on tropical hydroponics describing hydroponics in Peru. Expansions of rooftop greenhouses with new locations in New York, Chicago, and Montreal display updated facilities and crops.

This book is a comprehensive and practical guide to soilless growing. It is known as the Bible of the industry. It is a methods book in that it provides detailed information on how to design, set up and operate hydroponic culture systems. It also describes the most successful cultures to use with specific crops. Hydroponic Food Production provides an immediatereference for those who are presently growing hydroponically as well as a guidebook to get prospective growers started. The sixth edition contains 450 photographs, drawings and tables. It has directories, addresses, references, bibliography and a complete index.

Hydroponics offers many advantages to traditional soil-based horticulture. These include greater control over many of the limiting factors, such as light, temperature, and pests, as well as the ability to grow plants in all seasons. With instruction from one of the top recognized authorities worldwide, Hydroponics for the Home Grower gives you step