Nutrisense

A major technological component of the modern greenhouse industry is the soilless cultivation. However, the management of nutrition in soilless cultivations poses serious difficulties to growers, because the calculation of the fertilizers needed to prepare a nutrient solution (NS) requires a good background in chemistry and is time consuming. Furthermore, the composition of the NS supplied to the plants needs modifications at different cropping stages. The calculations are specific for each grower and cropping stage, because of differences both in the mineral composition of the irrigation water used to prepare NSs, and in cropping conditions, which entail individual decisions about adaptations in nutrient supply during the cropping period. Thus, there is a need for modern computational tools operating as decision support systems (DSS) which can provide easy and accurate calculation and adaptation of NSs in each commercial enterprise whenever needed.