Development status and future research emphase on greenhouse horticultural equipment and its relative technology in China

Abstract: With the fast increasing of greenhouse scale, the Chinese greenhouse horticultural equipment industry also developed rapidly in recent years. A complete technology system would be establishing gradually. On account of shortage for influencing mechanism between greenhouse environment and plant demand, poor matching of greenhouse with equipment and low level of the whole equipment manufacturing industry, the level of greenhouse horticultural equipment in China is lower than that in developed country in the aspects of technical content, stability, information and intelligent level. The mechanization rate of greenhouse horticulture in China is only 32.45% in 2012, and there was imbalance of mechanization rate among the processes of greenhouse horticulture such as plough, cultivate, harvest, environmental control and so on. These situation limiting the improvement of effectiveness level and labor productivity of greenhouse horticulture industry in China. After the announcement of Made in China 2025 Action Plan, it is necessary to make a systematic summary for equipment and relative technology of greenhouse horticulture in China, and to point out the research main points of the greenhouse horticultural equipment which play the real supporting function roles in greenhouse horticulture. Based on obtaining the present status of Chinese greenhouse horticulture equipment technology exactly, the level of greenhouse horticulture equipment in China was compared with that in the developed country from the aspects of seeding breeding equipment, cultivation producing equipment, logistics transporting equipment, plant management equipment, and the relative gap between countries was found. Meanwhile, the problems existing in the development of Chinese greenhouse horticulture equipment technology were point out, such as: lacking of systematic and constant research and innovation, shortage of accumulation in agronomic technique matching with equipment, absence of systematic research for future technology, insufficiency of integrity and engineering for equipment. The future key research tasks in Chinese greenhouse horticulture equipment were formulated, such as: 1)long-term collaborative research for regional greenhouse horticultural crop growth mechanism, which conducted the continues monitoring for equipment, environment and crop physiology in multi-span greenhouse, Chinese solar greenhouse in the north of China and plastic film greenhouse in the south of China, and established the relation model between mainly environment parameters and crop yield under different greenhouse equipment conditions in different region; 2)technology research for upgrade and update of Chinese solar greenhouse, which developed the new greenhouse structure and cultivation model to achieve whole year planting, labor force saving, land saving and energy saving; 3) whole industrial chain automatic production technology and equipment research, which developed the equipment for seed breeding, cultivation, harvesting and logistics, to archived vegetable automatic production in greenhouse; 4) research for greenhouse horticulture intelligent management equipment, which developed the information management software for large greenhouse production and established regional greenhouse horticulture cloud computing database; 5) research for non-cultivated land greenhouse equipment, which integrated the water saving irrigation technology and soilless cultivation technology to archive planting in greenhouse in non-cultivated land. The policy suggestions were also put forward such as making greenhouse horticultural equipment technology innovation plan, establishing technology promotion service system and so on. This article should provide an important reference for making future planning and policy by government and scientific research institutions and for guiding the innovation of Chinese greenhouse horticulture equipment technology.