The application of "soil-less" or "hydroponic" technique in table viticulture represents today, after almost twenty years from the beginning of the scientific experimentation conducted in Sicily, a valid opportunity for diversification of the production systems in the sector of table grapes.

This technique of vines grown in pots was developed with the aim of obtaining harvesting precocity, expanding the supply calendar and increasing the production per unit area compared to "traditional" greenhouse systems.

The table grape soilless fields built in recent years bear witness to an ever-increasing interest in the use of this type of cultivation, also because the choice of new planting layouts adopted, even without decreasing the yield per unit area, allow a mechanization of the foliar and phytosanitary treatments, further breaking down some items of crop management.

Table vineyard yields, whose land has become "impossible to grow" due to soil exhaustion, can be adapted to the cultivation of the soilless plants without excessive adjustment costs.

The plasticity of adaptation of the vine to the cultivation in containers allows a certainly "sustainable" production model both in sophisticated cultivation systems, such as the "active" Dutch greenhouse model, and in more traditional cultivation systems such as table grape "tendone".

With the soilless, therefore, high quality productions are obtained that respond at the same time to the needs of the consumer with regard to the reduction of the contaminating factors and the needs of food safety.

Why choose soilless cultivation in table grape viticulture ...

A. Unproductive phase of 18 months

B. Conferral of dynamism to the sector

C. Destagionalization of productions

D. Increased productivity per square meter

E. Possibility of re-adapting the existing structures of the "tendone" for soilless system

F. Simplification of production pruning

They talk about it  ...