Brief beginning

In high-tech agriculture, greenhouse technology has its important role to play.

Greenhouse technology

Growing of crops in green houses has proved to be the best way of utilizing the crops potential. Computerized control of irrigation, fertilization (Fertigation) and microclimate in green house enable precise monitoring of the most important production practices. Soil-less culture means any system of crop production not based on soil as the root medium. Soil-less culture helps in optimizing nutrient supply and overcomes the difficulty of managing problematic soils. Both these technologies have revolutionized the production of flowers such as rose and zerbera and in high-tech agriculture water is regarded as a national asset and for conservation of water following steps is taken in Israel.

  • The appearance of the automatic value, and upgrade of watermeter.

  • Utilization of plastic pipes and tubes for water supply and irrigation.

  • Introduction of drip irrigation, the third step to increase water use efficiency was accomplished during the seventies with such main items as;

  • Focused activity in the small holders' family farms, which had been using water less efficiently than the bigger collective farms.

  • Since farmers have hardly the money to invest in updating the irrigation system great financial assistance was rendered by the state.

  • Introduction of irrigation computers.

  • Fertigation; The Integration of fertilization with irrigation

  • Further precision of water application was achieved by; Irrigation scheduling based on agro-meteorological indicators.

  • Wide-scale use of computerized irrigation controller.

  • Further, fine-tuning of water application is continuing in the fifth decade – the nineties.

  • Countywide automatic weather stations have been established.

  • Irrigation is based on vegetal indicators like plant water potential and growth rate of the fruits etc.

  • The appearance of the minute irrigation with extremely low applications rate less than 1mm/h.

  • About two-third of the water supply is pumped from under ground and one-third from upper water resources. The rest is pumped from small local reservoirs collecting run-off water, small streams and springs, as well as reclaimed water.


Ag.
Technologies
(Hi-Tech Agriculture)