The largest modern smart greenhouse in Asia, Dezhou Smart Agriculture Industrial Park has been put into use. The 510,000 tomato plants planted in the park are about to be harvested in November, and during this one-year production period, the estimated output value will be 500,000 RMB, which is 20 times that of traditional agricultural greenhouses.
In Dezhou Smart Agriculture Industrial Park rows of tomato seedlings are planted in cocopeat, and the water and fertilizer integration system transported nutrients to the seedlings through the drippers. After nearly a month of growth, the tomato plants have begun to hang vines, and some even have green fruits.
The park covers an area of 53.6 hectares, and a total of 4 greenhouses are built, of which the largest single area is more than 26.67 hectares. In addition, there are recycle pools for rainwater, curtain systems, heating systems, water and fertilizer integration systems, electrical systems and other supporting equipment in the park, which currently is the modern agricultural smart greenhouse park with the largest single area in Asia.
According to Yang Shuai, a staff member of Dezhou Smart Agriculture Industrial Park, the greenhouse uses a method of soilless cultivation, using hanging planting gutters in the greenhouse, and cocopeat as a cultivation substrate, which doesn’t require contact with the surface soil when fertilizing crops. In opposition to cultivation on ground soil in traditional greenhouses, soil pollution is avoided.
Yang Shuai said that through the Internet of Things technology, the sensor nodes in the environment in the greenhouse can collect the environmental information in real-time, such as temperature, humidity, soil moisture, and carbon dioxide, and transfer to the computer terminal via the wireless communication network, and judge through the big data analysis. After that, the IoT platform can automatically adjust the specified environmental control equipment according to the manually set parameters. It can control the water spray, open the window, open the curtain, etc. Through advanced technologies, smart agricultural greenhouses can increase crop yields, increase efficiency and improve quality, and effectively avoid a series of problems such as soil compaction caused by excessive use of water and fertilizer, declining soil fertility, environmental degradation, and unsafety and insecurity of agricultural products.
“The individualized nutrients given to every seedling through the environmental control system not only improve the land utilization rate but also produce high-yield, high-quality fruits through differential management.” Yang Shuai told the journalist that the greenhouse uses ultra-white calendered scattering glass, with a light transmission of 91.5%, which allows plants to receive light more evenly while avoiding burns. In order to ensure the green health of the fruit, it adopts a combination of bumblebee pollination, physical control and biological control to control pests and diseases, and basically achieve zero pesticides.
At present, the greenhouse mainly produces 8 varieties such as cherry tomatoes. After the calculation and actual planting, in the production season of the whole year, the output per unit area of the park is more than 5 times that of the traditional agricultural greenhouse, and the output value per hectare is 7.5 million RMB, which is 20 times that of the traditional agricultural greenhouse.
For the next step, Dezhou Smart Agriculture Industrial Park will rely on smart agriculture, the introduction of new agricultural materials, artificial intelligence and cold chain logistics, to construct a national smart agricultural distribution center, to create an international exchange platform for technology transformation, technology R&D, technology trading and product display functions, to build a smart agricultural headquarters integrating production data center, talents training center and information operation center.
Source: chinanews.com