Water Stress and Root Disease Detection in Protected Crops by Routine Measurements

Water Stress and Root Disease Detection in Protected Crops by Routine Measurements.

Keywords: Greenhouse, Stress, Environment monitoring, Hydroponics.

Abstract

Early detection of crop stress is especially beneficial in greenhouses, because the highly controllable environment makes it possible to take corrective actions once the onset of stress has been detected. While information about the well-being of a given plant can be obtained by direct measurements (e.g. leaf position, sap flow, transpiration rate), this ‘speaking plant’ approach has the disadvantage that the small number of plants that can be monitored are not necessarily representative of the whole greenhouse.

This paper presents a different approach. It is based on monitoring the crop environment and uses changes in the environment as indicators of stress and is illustrated using two case studies, in which the root and shoot environment, respectively, are monitored.

Raphael Linker and Ido Seginer, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Lowdermilk Division of Agricultural Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel.

Leslie S. Katzman, Department of Floriculture and Ornamental Horticulture, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.

13 Pages, 6 Figures, 1 Table, 13 References.