DESIGNING A GREENHOUSE PLANT: NOVEL APPROACHES TO IMPROVE RESOURCE USE EFFICIENCY IN CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENTS

Greenhouse cultivation is among the most advanced technological systems in agricultural productions since it allows to optimally adjust the environment to the actual plant needs and vice versa.
Much progress in greenhouse technology has been achieved by developing high-tech covering materials with an improved light transmittance, designing efficient cultivation units and water/nutrients delivery systems (hydroponics), improving the control of environmental parameters through sophisticated software.
In contrast, the development of a greenhouse plant with characteristics that have been properly tailored for this environment has rarely been the focus of a specific research.
Such specificity is required by the peculiar modifications, both metabolic and morphological, that plants undergo in the greenhouse environment.
Although greenhouse production is generally associated to high technological-input systems, advances in plant biotechnology have mainly been addressed to generate field- rather than greenhouse- high-tech crops.
In addition, the definition of biophysical models for predicting resource fluxes in a confined/controlled environment could greatly benefit of the possibility of changing specific plant traits to test and validate such models.
This approach could generate an unprecedented feed-back/feed-forward research system able to identify optimal plant/environment interactions for an efficient resource use.
Here we provide a few examples on how the information generated via model analysis can be tested and, more importantly, improved by implementing biotechnological tools.

International Symposium on High Technology for Greenhouse System Management: Greensys2007

A. Maggio, S. De Pascale, G. Barbieri

biophysical models, biotechnology, stress tolerance

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2008.801.151