Effects of a special solar collector greenhouse on water balance, fruit quantity and fruit quality of tomatoes

Dennis Dannehl, Johanna Suhl, Susanne Huyskens-Keil, Christian Ulrichs and Uwe Schmidt

Agricultural Water Management, 2014, vol. 134, issue C, 14-23

Abstract: Based on the fact that several regions worldwide and even in Germany are affected by water deficit problems, a new agronomic approach was developed to produce tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum L.) in a sustainable way. The main objective of this study was to investigate the effects of a special solar collector greenhouse consisting of finned tube heat exchangers on the quantity and quality of fruit, water use efficiency and water balance. Changing microclimatic conditions in this system positively affected plant physiological processes, resulting in an increased total yield of up to 31.8% and a decreased total water uptake within the crop of up to 29% when compared with a commercial greenhouse. These conditions led not only to a reduction in the amount of nutrient solution (NS) consisting of valuable fresh water but also to increased water use efficiency (+81%). Furthermore, it was found that the finned tube heat exchangers can be considered as a complex water management system, which can be used to collect high quantities of condensation water. It was calculated that a fresh water supplementation used to mix the NS can be completely omitted when the captured rain and condensation water is reused under the conditions in the solar collector greenhouse. In order to test to what extent the collected condensation water was suitable for irrigation, the effects of condensate-containing NS with a higher Zn concentration (1.74mgL−1) were examined regarding yield and the ingredients in tomatoes. Compared with an applied NS supplemented with 0.2mg ZnL−1, condensate-containing NS increased fruit quantity (+39%) and quality, e.g., contents of lycopene (+15%), β-carotene (+13%) and phenolic compounds (+12%). Based on the above-mentioned results, it was concluded that a collector greenhouse can be regarded as a useful tool to increase the yield as well as to reduce amounts of fresh water, and the condensation water can safely be reused in hydroponic systems.

Keywords: Semi-closed greenhouse; Carotenoids; Phenolic compounds; Zinc; Photosynthesis; Plant transpiration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377413003314
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:134:y:2014:i:c:p:14-23

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2013.11.016

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().