A plastic tent was designed and constructed for the controlled atmosphere (CA) storage of small quantities of fresh produce. The CA tent is suspended from pallet racking in a standard cold room and can hold two standard pallets stacked 6 feet high with produce. Tents are sealed with two air tight zippers and a small water trough, resulting in an airtight chamber that successfully maintains CA storage environments. The CA tents are easily set up and removed to allow flexibility in use of storage space. To provide efficient use of storage space tents can be stacked two or three high on pallet racking. Tents are easily loaded and unloaded by a single person using a forklift. CA tents provide an economical alternative to traditional CA rooms for the storage of small quantities of fresh produce under CA environments.
Single-span plastic greenhouses and solar greenhouses are frequently employed in protected horticulture in developing countries due to their simplicity and low cost. In China, the area of single-span plastic greenhouse and solar greenhouse is 4
Large-scale container-grown nursery plant production began in the early 1950s and helped to diversify the nursery industry. Most of the clay, recycled metal, and wooden containers initially used in nurseries were replaced by plastic containers in
Soil solarization, also referred to as solar heating or solar pasteurization, is accomplished by passive heating of moist soil covered with transparent plastic film for more than 6 weeks ( McGovern and McSorley, 1997 ). Solarization is a useful
Plastic is the most commonly used material for containers in nursery and greenhouse operations. Schrader (2013) estimated that the green industry uses over 750 million kilograms of petroleum plastic for containers per year. Plastic containers are
Plastic (polyethylene) mulches have been used in vegetable production in the United States since the 1950s. Black polyethylene plastic mulch is the standard plastic mulch used in vegetable production. Black plastic alters the plant's growing
, and the possibly prohibitive cost for large-scale adoption. A similar method could be used, without the reservoir, using a plastic mulch system. A plastic mulch system could improve favorably on some of the aforementioned limitations. Horticultural
An important obstacle to long-term sustainability in the container-crops industry is the nearly universal reliance on containers made from petroleum-based plastics. Although petroleum-plastic containers favor efficiency and profitability, their use
physiology. Photoselective plastic films, bagging, mulch, coating, or netting can be used to alter light. Far red (FR) and red lights (R), and the ratio of FR/R photon can be significantly affected by these applications, which might act through the natural
Biodegradable plastic mulch was introduced in the 1990s as an alternative to PE mulch, which has been used in agriculture worldwide since the early 1960s to control weeds, conserve soil moisture, modify soil temperature, shorten time to harvest, and