Step 1: Understanding the Concept:
Aeroponics is a soilless growing method in which plant roots hang in air inside a closed chamber and are misted with a nutrient solution at regular intervals, instead of being grown in soil or even in water as in hydroponics.
Step 2: Key Formula or Approach:
This technology is valuable wherever a crop is propagated from a vegetative structure that forms underground, because it lets growers harvest that structure repeatedly from the same plant without disturbing the root zone by digging.
Step 3: Detailed Explanation:
In potato seed production, aeroponics is used commercially to raise mini tubers from tissue culture plantlets. The suspended roots let small tubers form in the air gap below the stem base, and these can be harvested in multiple pickings over the season, giving many more disease free mini tubers per plant than growing the same plant in soil or substrate.
Tomato, capsicum and brinjal are grown for their fruit or seed from the fruit, and they do not have an underground vegetative propagation structure like the potato tuber, so aeroponic mini tuber style production does not apply to them in the same commercial way.
Step 4: Final Answer:
Aeroponic technology is commercially used for quality seed (mini tuber) production in potato.