Softboard as a Novel Wood Fibre-Based Substrate for Hydroponic Systems - A Preliminary Study

Hydroponics or the soilless cultivation is a popular and fast growing sector of agriculture and it has many advantages over soil-based system. It offers opportunities to provide optimal conditions for plant growth and therefore higher yields can be obtained compared to open field cultivation. In the aggregate system of hydroponics, different substrates are currently being used as support to the root system of plants under soilless cultivation. Substrates can be organic such as peat, pine bark, sawdust, rice hulls, etc. They can be petroleum based such as polymeric foams or plastic beads or they can be inorganic mineral based such as sand, gravel, perlite and stone wool. There are reasons for using substrates to support the root system. An effective substrate should possess certain qualities. Still works are underway to find more suitable ones having several advantages over the existing ones.  The present studies were undertaken with the objective of establishing the suitability of Softboard, a commercial Low Density Fibreboard product, manufactured from locally available hardwood fibres, as a suitable substrate for seed germination and seedling growth of two vegetable crops, Green gram (Phaseolus aureus) and Fenugreek(Trigonella foenumgraecum). The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a novel hydroponic substrate based on hardwood fibres could perform similarly to the existing materials. During this work, the author has compared the results obtained using the softboard with that of two commonly used substrates i.e., coirpith and sawdust. The article has also attempted to highlight all the advantages of this novel growing medium when compared to the known items.