Technical Procedures for Closed Crop Production Systems to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate Change-Induced Abiotic Stress

One of the major challenges of the 21st century is the mitigation of global climate change, which is mainly caused by greenhouse gas emissions. One contribution to this could be made by advanced and intelligently controlled greenhouse systems. Therefore, the main objective of the forthcoming project, with four project partners, is to develop and optimize innovative technical procedures for the greenhouse system as a whole. This will be done not only to achieve a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but also to reduce the consumption of freshwater and fertilizer recourses. This goal is in the context with the optimization of microclimatic conditions, such as temperature, relative humidity, light intensity and quality as well as CO2 concentration, in the closed plant production system to ensure the high-quality food supply to the population regardless of the climatic changes. The research is especially focussed on the finding of an optimal cooling process, the development of new outdoor climate-adapted CO2, light and nutrient solution control strategies, as well as new substrates and substrate-less culture systems for closed greenhouse system, taking into account the reduction of abiotic stress factors in times of increasing variability of climatic conditions. Within the frame of investigations on the changes of the phenotype caused by the technical procedures, online measured phytosignals (photosynthesis, transpiration, leaf temperature, stomata conductance, chlorophyll fluorescence etc.) and laboratory analyses are parts of this project to detect changes in the primary and secondary metabolism of plants and associated changes in product quality and quantity.