Cultivating Resilience: Climate Change Adaptation Strategies for Greenhouses to Enhance Yield and Resource Efficiency

Introduction

Climate change poses enormous challenges to greenhouse agriculture, impacting productivity, resource consumption, and sustainability alike. The LIFE ACCLIMATE project addresses this pressing issue through an innovative and comprehensive approach. Its primary objective is to develop, demonstrate, and replicate a groundbreaking solution capable of empowering greenhouse agriculture to adapt sustainably to the current rapid shifting climatic conditions.

Proposed Approach

The proposed approach combines digital control technologies with resource-efficient practices and it promises several key advantages:

• It will enhance productivity while reducing water, energy, and fertilizer consumption, addressing both resource efficiency and environmental concerns at the same time.
• It will eliminate the need for chemical pesticides, promoting sustainable and eco-friendly agricultural practices.
• LIFE ACCLIMATE will pioneer novel greenhouse control systems leveraging data gathered by autonomous aerial and terrestrial robots. These robots will supply data and images, which will be harnessed by advanced productivity and resource use prediction models based on Artificial Intelligence.

Demonstrators and Replicators

The demonstrators and replicators planned in Spain, focusing on tomato, pepper, cucumber, and lettuce, underscore the nation's significance in the greenhouse sector and its vulnerability to climate change, especially in the Almeria region.

Rising temperatures in southern Spain are intensifying irrigation and cooling needs, fostering pest and disease outbreaks while reducing productivity. Even traditionally temperate Spanish northern regions are nowadays grappling with hotter summers.

Thus, energy-intensive heating systems are becoming indispensable in northern areas requiring energy efficiency improvements to curb emissions in a context of soaring energy costs. That’s why the project’s replicability plan will play a crucial role in adopting this innovative approach in other contexts, settings, and European regions.