As strawberries grow and bear fruit just above ground, hard labor in a crouching position for picking and plant management have restricted large-scale production. We developed a new substrate culture system for strawberries ‘Rakuchin’ as one goal of our strawberry research. Now we are upgrading the system equipment and technical description, and also performing physiological strawberry research based on our production system.

Tomato plants can grow with very small root volume when frequent fertigation is conducted in proportion to solar radiation. Adequately fertigated plants produce qualified but small fruits, and blossom-end rot (BER) often develops in young rapidly growing fruits. We are developing a productive tomato growing system with strict root-zone restriction and performing physiological research on BER development in relation to Ca nutrition.

Environmental pollution from the disposal of used rock wool and the discharge of waste solution has become a major problem in rose production. A new rose production method that is eco-friendly and can produce high quality cut flowers is demanded. We are developing a closed bench culture bench that can eliminate the need to abandon outside used nutrient solution.

We found that medium could be hardened using heat fusion fiber. We also found normal growth of cell transplants and that they were not affected by the hardened medium after transplanting. We demonstrated that use of hardened medium could enable bedding plant production without polyethylene pots. Pansy and garden-type cyclamen plants grown in compacted medium without polyethylene pots in the summer season were bigger than those grown in compacted medium with polyethylene pots. The temperature of the medium without polyethylene pots was lower than that with polyethylene pots. This could be due to the evaporative cooling effect from the surface of compacted medium without polyethylene pots.