Soilless culture is a technique for crop production using no soil. Crops are grown in the nutrient solution or on a proper medium, therefore, soilless culture involves no work such tools or machines. But it needs additional costs for growing systems and chemical fertilizers. It offers earlier growth and higher yield. Lack of suitable soils, disease contamination after repeated use and the desire to apply optimal conditions for plant growth are leading to the worldwide trend of growing plant in media instead of soil characterization of these medium is not available in literature, therefore, the main aim of this work is to investigate the physical and chemical properties (light peat, vermiculite, perlite, dark peat, light peat and perlite (70:30) and light peat and vermiculite (50:50)) that meets the requirement of plant growth. These properties include: bulk density, moisture content, water holding capacity, porosity, pH, electrical conductivity (EC), total organic carbon, total organic matter, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, total potassium and C/N ratio. |
