Data-driven sustainable soilless growing media formulation for container plant production

Lead Applicant: Sheng Yang

Research Priority: Competitive Production Systems

Program Type: Tier 1

Funding Cycle: 2024/2025

Research Centre: NA

Research Summary: Peat-based soilless growing media (SGM) is extensively used in the Canadian container plant production industry. However, harvesting peat moss is weather-dependent and has raised serious environmental concerns (e.g., wetland destruction). We propose to develop peat-free or peat-reduced SGM by using locally available sustainable materials (e.g., compost). However, majority of these materials lacks consistency in quality and their physical and chemical properties can vary from batch to batch. Using the current trial-and-error mixing process is difficult for securing consistency in SGM properties. This consequently forces growers to change their rootzone management strategies (e.g., fertigation) for different batches of SGM which can be extremely difficult. This proposal represents the first attempt worldwide to create data-driven computational models for formulating new SGM with targeted physical and chemical properties based on the characteristics of constituent materials. This initiative will help producers to reduce their dependence on peat-based SGM and reuse waste materials.