Development status of automated equipment systems for greenhouse potted flowers production in Netherlands

To solve the problem about labor shortages and high labor costs of greenhouse horticultural production, and to improve the competitiveness of greenhouse horticultural production, the Netherlands had been developing automated production systems for horticultural production. By now the automated production technology of greenhouse horticultural production in Netherland has reached the world leading position. This paper focused on the potted flower producing machines widely used in the Netherlands, such as seedlings transplanting machines, internal transporting equipments of potted flowers, spacing units, vision grading machines and packaging machines, etc, which constituting automated production systems of greenhouse. The characteristics of the automated production technology for potted flowers in Netherlands were summed up as follows: managing productions by means of cultivation expert systems; highly automated operations；a high level of annuel land utilization rate; and the most of manufacturers actively innovating new type of automated production machines. The Netherlands' experiences can help China to improve the labor problems of greenhouse horticultural production. China should firstly develop automated systems for flowers production according to its own conditions, and extend the automated production technologies to greenhouse vegetables production after the technologies being mature, so as to promote a modern transformation of horticultural production in China by means of automated production technologies.