The Florida vegetable industry relies heavily on plasticulture technologies from the transplant nursery through the packing house and market chain. The value of the Florida vegetable industry has consistently risen while the acreage has declined for many commodities. The use of greenhouse technologies for high-valued crops is an alternative method of crop production that would compliment the cu...

In order to accurately determine the growth of greenhouse crops, the system based on AVR Single Chip microcontroller and wireless sensor networks is developed, it transfers data through the wireless transceiver devices without setting up electric wiring, the system structure is simple. The monitoring and management center can control the temperature and humidity of the greenhouse, measure the c...

The use of evolutionary algorithms for calculation of the optimal control of the states of a greenhouse system will be presented. The integrated model employed (greenhouse climate, crop growth, outside weather conditions and control equipment) predicts temperature, air humidity and CO2 concentration in a time interval of 15-60 minutes (short time-scale model). The paper presents the optimizatio...

In 2008, the world produced approximately 87 gigaliters of liquid biofuels, which is roughly equal to the volume of liquid fuel consumed by Germany that year. Essentially, all of this biofuel was produced from crops developed for food production, raising concerns about the net energy and greenhouse gas effects and potential competition between use of land for production of fuels, food, animal f...

Abiotic stress conditions such as drought, heat, or salinity cause extensive losses to agricultural production worldwide. Progress in generating transgenic crops with enhanced tolerance to abiotic stresses has nevertheless been slow. The complex field environment with its heterogenic conditions, abiotic stress combinations, and global climatic changes are but a few of the challenges facing mode...

This study investigated the phytotoxicity of herbicides applied singly or as mixtures to different crops under greenhouse conditions. Growth inhibition of the crops was taken as an indicator of phytotoxicity. Phytotoxicity of mixtures was estimated by calculating EC50 value in toxic units. EC50 (mg/kg soil) of Alachlor, Bromacil and/or Diuron were: 11.37, 4.77, 1.64, respectively, on melon; 0.1...

Global food security is threatened by crop diseases that account for average yield losses of 16%. Climate change is exacerbating threats to food security in much of the world, emphasising the need to increase food production in northern European countries such as the UK. However, to mitigate climate change, crops must be grown so as to minimise greenhouse gas emissions (GHG); results with UK oi...