Project > Macqu-D > Objectivies

The greenhouse (GH) industry, although new compared to traditional agriculture, has been supported nationally very heavily in research and other support measures. A number of EU funded, as well as national, projects around Europe deal with plant breeding in protected horticulture and greenhouse management. A wealth of research results exists regarding the management of GH operations. A previous project (MACQU = Management And Control for QUality in greenhouses) has addressed issues such as humidity, nutrients and water management with respect to environmental impact and quality of produce. It has also developed an advanced complete (software and hardware) system, which allows the in-field implementation of intelligent management approaches effectively and at low cost.

Objectives:  The main objective of this project is to verify but also demonstrate, under commercial conditions, the advantages of the results achieved by previous research as well as to demonstrate the effectiveness of the management system to implement research results and expert grower’s goals. Research results for immediate exploitation mainly concern:

l        management of irrigation and nutrients supply to minimize effluents, water use and cost

l        economically control humidity to minimize infection risk and associated control chemicals

l        management of energy inputs according to plant physiological heat demand to reduce unnecessary heating

l        verify and disseminate quality relations to climate and nutrients concentrations and demonstrate the ability of the system to incorporate grower’s quality targets into the management.

Application domain: GH production has a high capital investment and faces sharp competition. The EU greenhouse production is threatened by low prizes of third countries and a solution way is to strengthen competitiveness by “improving the quality of produce”, while reducing cost through better “management”.

The characteristics of the greenhouse industry are:

The targeted results, which shall attract producer’s interest to adopt research findings, are:  

l        a reduction of cost in EU GH production, through better management, and  

l       a modern, reliable but also cost effective solution for implementation of the advanced management practices.