Opening Remarks

It was just over 45 years ago, in 1955, that the first Soilless Cultural Society was established during the Fourteenth International Horticultural Congress in Holland. The original group consisted of just 12 members, four of which have since passed away. Five have left the group and the remaining three are the original founding members: Professor F. Penningsfeld, Abram Steiner and myself. We were sorry that Dr. Penningsfeld and Mr. Steiner were unable to attend this World Congress and send our best wishes.

In the year 1955, there was only one hectare of hydroponics in the entire world, of which 10% was located in Israel. Today, there are over 30,000 hectares.

In 1959, The International Society for Horticultural Science, ISHS, was established.

Our Soilless Culture Group ISOSC (formerly IWOSC) was not granted permission to hold meetings with them. The argument was that “soil-less culture does not make any sense; nobody would seriously be interested.”

This was over forty years ago! Now we are happy that the representatives of the ISHS are involved. The perception of “ the nonsense” of soilless culture forty years ago was almost universal. In Israel, agricultural scientists and public opinion were against hydroponics. We were perceived as liars! It was stated that plants cannot grow without soil or organic matter.

Originally, the project we started in Israel, in Kibbutz Chafetz Chaim, was for religious reasons in order to resolve the problem of the Sabbatical Year. According to Jewish law, every seventh year people are not allowed to work the earth on our Holly Land. Soil-less culture was proposed as an alternative. In those years the only solution was water culture and gravel culture methods, yet both were far too expensive. Nevertheless, it was proven that soil-less culture was indeed possible.

The next phase of soil-less culture was in the arid zone of the Negev. Here we could demonstrate the possibility of using saline water and show the reduced amount of water required for a certain yield. The research was done in the Negev Institute for Arid Zone Research in Beersheva. The shift to sand culture, rockwood and plastic culture methods made the systems commercially feasible in Israel and similarly throughout the world.

The control and reduction of the root-shoot ratio was another positive achievement and the clarification and simplification of the nutrient solution made it possible to control the whole system industrially and automatically.

We have now achieved the first goal. Soilless culture is practical and used all over the world. What happened in the past is now history! The main achievement and development has occurred in the last few years, under controlled environmental conditioning and this direction will continue to supply the market with excellent fruits and flowers, soillessly grown.

One of our prime future objectives will be the use of soil-less culture in developing countries with warm arid zones, in near desert conditions wherever water shortage is a critical problem.

In urban areas- urban agriculture near mega-cities, soilless culture methods may have an important future. To grow excellent quality vegetables for personal consumption and surplus for nearby marketing will improve the diet of the local people as well as provide them with additional income.

CONSIDERING FUTURE PROBLEMS!

• What are the future growing systems and methods?
• Does plant growth element cycling (e.g. element and transformations) and buttering capacity require further important studies?
• Is choice of species and multiple species considered a basic problem?
• Are there expected improvements in;
  • The use of high saline water
  • The use of sea water
  • The use of sewage water
  • Reduction of water loss
• Could improvement of slow release fertilizer (nutrient solution) have an important influence?
• Basic food products such as rice, or root culture such as potato, or tree-like plants such as grapes are not ‘economic. Could there be a change in these crops?
• Is break-through improvement in nutrient-solution composition expected?
• What are the limiting factors in improvement of soil-less culture as;
  • Root-shoot ration
  • Plant maintenance respiration
  • Root-aeration / environmental control
  • Shoot aeration / CO2 control
  • Plant nutrition
• Is waste processing a future problem resulting from recycling of nutrient solution and recycling of plant growth material?
• In semi-arid and arid areas, soilless culture will have a great future. Which directions of research seem to be the most fruitful?
• Towards home plant growth units (applied growth chambers); Is this topic too premature to be considered?
• What are the future main factors hampering improvement of soil-less culture?

For some time, we have been discussing the future of the International Society for Soilless Culture. We think that the time has come for ISOSC members to reach a conclusion about our future and proceed accordingly in a constructive manner in order to further develop properly. This was discussed at the Congress.

What really matters is that researchers, active in soilless culture, have the means and opportunity to communicate with one another, to exchange ideas, and to meet from time to time. This would require regular meeting of qualitative yield and opportunities to publish the results of our research.

We are convinced that the ISHS could offer us ample opportunities to meet the above indicated requirements. We have contacted our members to give us a mandate and have received 78 positive responses and no negative responses.

ISOSC would become the new ‘Working Group PS5 on Soil-less Culture-ISOSC’ Under the ISHS Commission Plant Substrates. No separate ISOSC membership dues would be charged. As a rule, researchers are not obligated to becoming ISHS Members in order to belong to a working group. Nevertheless, it would be desirable for one to become a member of the ISHS in order to receive all the relevant information on activities of the ISHS. Membership dues are currently at approximately $34.00 U.S. dollars annually for developed countries and biennially for developing countries. This entitles one to major discounts on the registration fees for all ISHS symposia, to the quarterly magazine “Chronica Horticulturae” and to Discounts on the series and volumes of Acta Horticulturae. As any other ISHS Working Group, the Working Group on Soil-less Culture – ISOSC, would have its own Chairperson and Secretary, and under their guidance the new working group would publish newsletters and take responsibility for the organization of Symposia on Soilless Culture. At this congress it was decided that ISOSC will continue in ISHS and in cooperation with the Commission on Substrates and Growing Media of ISHS.

Every two years there will be a Congress of the Growing Media Group, and every three to four years there will be a combined congress, where we will split during the Congress for ISOSC (Soil-less Culture) and the Growing Media Group. Our next Congress will therefore be in two years in a format similar to the previous one and is planned to be held in Southern France. It is of course, a continuation of ISOSC but will still need a new status in connection with ISHS and the primary board will consist of our board members as listed below. At our next Congress, we will elect new council members.

Our temporary Headquarters are at the Volcani Center in Israel and the Soilless Culture Information Center will be located at F.A.O. (Rome). National Societies already exist in Armenia, Singapore, Germany, South Korea, U.S.A., Canada, Australia, and Israel and they are contacted as well.

This World Congress was made possible by the efforts of Professor Zvi Plaut, Dr. Asher Bartal, Dr. Yiftach Ben-Asher and Dr. Albert Avidan who donated a great deal of their time and talents without which this would not have been possible. Among our very distinguished guests were: Dr. Omer Verdonk (ISHS), Dr. Wilfried Baudoin (F.A.O.), Dr. Moshe Goren from the S. Hoham Agriculture Advisory, and Dr. Gritzman of The Volcani Center. To all of the aforementioned, we owe a debt of gratitude and extend our Thanks. The proceedings at the congress presented hereby have been made possible by Professor Zvi Plant and Dr. Asher Bar-Tal, to whom we offer our deepest gratitude.

Meir Schwarz