PLSCI 4175 - [Production and Management of Greenhouse Crops]

(CU-SBY)

Spring. Not offered: 2024-2025. Next offered: 2025-2026. 4 credits. Letter grades only (no audit).

Prerequisite: PLSCI 1101 and junior standing. Offered in even-numbered years only. Mandatory two-day, one-overnight field trip. Co-meets with PLSCI 5175.

W. Miller.

Covers basics of establishing a greenhouse operation, growing crops in optimized environments, and serving niche or mass market. Discusses technology basics including structures and equipment, systems for heating and cooling, lighting, irrigating and fertilizing, material handling, environmental stewardship, integrated pest management, and production management. Also covers world centers of greenhouse crop production; culture of cut, pot, bedding, vegetable, and fruit crops in greenhouses, emphasizing predictive harvesting through environmental, physical, and chemical management of growth and development. Each student grows one or more crops.

Outcome 1: Identify the major kinds of structures that are used for growing plants under “protected cultivation” and how a protected cultivation structure influences the plant-growing environment.

Outcome 2: Describe the major environmental factors that affect plant growth and control floral induction, initiation, and development and how they are manipulated to achieve desired results.

Outcome 3: Describe the equipment necessary to modify the greenhouse environment and demonstrate how they function.

Outcome 4: Calculate standard heat loss from greenhouse structures and determine the size of heating infrastructure needed.

Outcome 5: Calculate winter and summer ventilation requirements and equipment to meet cooling demand.

Outcome 6: Using available resources, develop crop production costs.

Outcome 7: Utilize outside resources to devise appropriate methods of growing an unknown crop.

Outcome 8: Describe the major greenhouse production and management systems and how they interact to profitably and responsibly produce floral crops.

Outcome 9: Responsibly produce (grow) a variety of flowering and edible crops within a commercially acceptable time period, recording major events and observations.

Outcome 10: Conduct an experiment, collect data and analyze the results, then interpret and communicate those results to an audience.