ISHS Acta Horticulturae 648: South Pacific Soilless Culture Conference - SPSCC
THE NEW ZEALAND GREENHOUSE INDUSTRY |
| Author: | T. Ivicevich |
| Abstract:
New Zealand’s greenhouse industry’s most significant business includes nursery, flower and salad vegetable production. Tomatoes and capsicums have the largest economic output and have received the most investment in recent times. This presentation focuses more on greenhouse tomato production because of the industry size, changes and diversity of greenhouses and media used. Tomatoes are grown year round in structures of different ages and designs with glass and flexible plastic as most common coverings. The opening of New Zealand’s borders to free trade over recent years and the dominance of supermarket retailing have had dramatic affects on tomato grower numbers, their attitude to technology for survival and creating some significant moves to corporate growing. Older and unheated tomato greenhouses are being pulled down for urbanisation or recalibrated for alternative crops like flowers, hydroponic lettuces and fresh salad leaf (mesculin) crops. Most new structures are Venlo type ‘packages’ partly or completely imported from the Netherlands. Double skin inflated greenhouses (arguably more suited for some parts of New Zealand) gaining a foothold seven to ten years ago have lost to the investment in glass with known ‘world standard’ systems that give more comfort to corporate growers. Medium size growers have followed suit. Today very few greenhouse cucumber, capsicum and tomatoes are grown in soil. Bag and bucket growing with sawdust (Pinus radiata) and pumice are the most common methods followed by NFT. The use of stonewool is expanding among the larger growers with one grower installing hanging gutters. Commercial DFT (deep flow) and aeroponics systems exist but are limited and coconut fibre has just been introduced. Cost and the changing grower profile have diluted local innovation in alternative growing systems but investment in research continues for adapting overseas guidelines for New Zealand conditions to increase production and quality. | |
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