Strategic Crop and Greenhouse Management in Mild Winter Climate Areas

Abstract

In the last decades, the increase of protected cultivation in glasshouses has been very scarce as compared with the large spread of low-cost plastic greenhouses around the world. The greenhouse area in northern Europe has been almost stable, while protected cultivation expanded enormously in the Mediterranean basin, enhanced by the enlarging demand of vegetables for the export and domestic markets, resulting from economic development. In the past, the production strategies in the Mediterranean greenhouse industries have been mainly related with the adaptation of the crops to a suboptimal environment, due to the limited greenhouse climate control. There is now a general trend to better equipped greenhouses with improved climate management, in order to increase product quality. Achieving an economic compromise between the higher costs of improved greenhouses and their increased agronomic production are requiring different solutions, according to the local technical and socio-economic conditions, in order to produce proper quality commodities at competitive levels, relative to the higher performances of the sophisticated glasshouse industry of northern European countries. The distance from the European markets, in export focused production, increases the transportation cost of Mediterranean production, limiting its competitiveness. The rise of the technological level in the “Mediterranean greenhouse agrosystem” includes diverse improvements related with greenhouse design and climate management, crop techniques and practices (cultivars, cycles, plant protection, irrigation, substrates,...) and market-oriented production strategies in the various conditions of the Mediterranean basin. The cultural level of the growers in different countries can be a limiting factor to improving the technological level of the greenhouses, and great efforts are being made to transfer this knowledge to the growers, providing them with the methodology of optimization of their production systems.