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Bram Steiner Award 2020 for best publication on soilless culture presented to Chris Blok
The Bram Steiner Award 2020 for best scientific publication in the field of Soilless Culture has been presented to Chris Blok of Wageningen University & Research. Blok is associated with the business unit Greenhouse Horticulture and Bulbs. The Bram Steiner Award is presented every three years.
Bram Steiner was one of the “founding fathers” of soilless cultivation in the 60s and 70s. His work formed a firm basis for our present knowledge on the behavior of nutrients in a nutrient solution and the uptake by the plant. This year, the Bram Steiner Award has been presented for the 6th time by the jury judging the papers, under the auspices of the Bram Steiner Foundation.
Publications eligible for the Bram Steiner Award have to be pioneering and of top quality, be published in a peer reviewed journal and should excel in originality. The main topic is the nutrition of the plant from a nutrient solution.
Chris Blok’s paper “Maximum Plant Uptakes for Water, Nutrients and Oxygen are not always met by Irrigation Rate and Distribution in Water-based Cultivation Systems” was published in Frontiers in Plant Science in 2017. In their paper Blok and his co-authors describe the uptake rate of water, nutrients and oxygen in growing systems on water such as nutrient film technique and deep flow technique.
The jury was charmed by the mix of a practical question with a scientific deepening. The price exists of a certificate and a reward.