GLASSHOUSE OF THE FUTURE

The Floriade is the world horticultural exhibition in the Netherlands.
The Floriade is held once every ten years – the event in 2002 will be the fifth.
The Dutch glasshouse industry and research will participate in the Floriade 2002 showing how the researchers expect a modern glasshouse to be in the year 2010: “The Glasshouse of the Future”. The main target of this modern glasshouse is to comply with the Dutch Integral environmental terms of reference (IMT-2010). This means an enormous effort to reduce the consumption of energy, fertilisation and chemical crop protection towards 2010. This presentation shows how growers may reach these terms of reference with new glasshouse constructions and covers, new crop production systems, alternative energy supply systems and dehumidification.
Further, researchers expect Total Quality Management, energy management and rural integration of glasshouse production to be important issues in 2010, but these aspects of the research project are beyond the scope of this presentation. Anti-reflection coatings on hardened glass combined with larger spans and windows transmit 9% more light, which means almost 9% more production for most crops in the Netherlands.
Improved synthetic covers can reduce the need of heating to 30%. On the other hand, we expect an increased supply of heat, due to long term energy storage in aquifers and the use of heat pumps and fuel cells.
Dehumidification combined with long term energy storage can make it possible to recover heat and water.
Further, growing with closed ventilators reduces the amount of new insects and makes it easier to enrich the inside air with CO2. Looking at crop production systems, temperature integration and an equal temperature distribution will lead to the greatest energy savings.
We expect new distribution techniques, biological crop protection and the use of pesticides from natural sources to reduce the consumption of chemical crop protection.
Researchers expect it to become difficult to reduce the consumption of nutrients.
This is because for the expected higher production more nutrients are needed.
On the other hand, now that almost all glasshouses recycle their drain water the emission of nutrients can be further decreased with FD sensors in soil cultures and with using models connected to the climate control in substrate cultures.
Robotisation is still quite rare in horticulture.
Moving the plants to the robot instead of the other way around may increase the possibilities of it.
The use of artificial lighting for more and controlled photosynthesis is increasing.
This also will increase the consumption of energy, nutrients and chemical crop protection per m². The consumption per unit of production however, may stay the same or even decrease. In conclusion, we can say that it will be possible to have an enormous reduction of the consumption of energy, nutrients and chemical crop protection per unit of production in 2010. How much the consumption per m² will decrease depends on how much artificial lighting the horticulture will use then.