Hydroponics in Maharashtra
One state, and about five different arguments for growing without soil.
Maharashtra is not one growing region. The Nashik belt already runs more protected cultivation than most states manage; the Konkan is humid and coastal; Marathwada and large parts of Vidarbha spend the back half of every summer worrying about water. What makes hydroponics worth the capital is a different sentence in each of them - and in a dry district it is the water, by a distance.
/01 What grows here
The crops worth the structure in Maharashtra
Not everything is worth growing without soil. These are the ones where the return justifies the system, and where the local market is already asking for them.
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Coloured capsicum
The state's established protected-cultivation crop, and the one most growers here have either grown or seen grown. Dutch buckets under a naturally ventilated polyhouse.
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Parthenocarpic cucumber
Fast, high yielding and needs no pollinator, which is exactly why it suits an enclosed structure. A reliable second crop in a capsicum house.
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Strawberry
Concentrated in the Satara hills, but table-top systems have pushed it into cooler pockets elsewhere in the state.
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Salad leaf and exotic vegetables
Lettuce, rocket, broccoli, zucchini and cherry tomato, driven by demand from Pune, Mumbai and Nashik rather than by any tradition of growing them.
/02 What it has to cope with
Designing for Maharashtra, not for a catalogue
Where water is the argument
In Marathwada and much of Vidarbha the question is not whether a crop grows but whether there is water to finish it. A recirculating system returns what the plants do not take up to the tank instead of draining it into the ground, and uses substantially less than a soil bed of the same area. The honest caveat is that you still need a dependable supply to start with, and hard borewell water may need treating before it is worth running through a system.
Where the market is the argument
Around Pune, Mumbai and Nashik it is not scarcity that pays for the system, it is the price of clean exotic produce delivered the day it was cut.
Delivered across the state
Everything is manufactured at our unit in Katraj, Pune, and shipped from there. Polyhouse and greenhouse construction is quoted per site, because the structure depends on what the wind and the ground at that particular place will do.
What we would supply
- NFT channels, dutch buckets and troughs
- Grow media, net cups and nutrients
- Naturally ventilated polyhouses
- Greenhouse design and farming consultancy
/03 Tell us the crop
Sized for your site in Maharashtra
Tell us what you want to grow and how much space you have, and we will come back with a system and a price. If hydroponics is the wrong answer for what you are planning, we will say so -- it is cheaper to hear it now.
You can also look at work we have finished before you decide.
/04 Elsewhere