Background:

Global water resources are becoming increasingly limited by having rising water demands in agriculture, households and industry. On the supply side, climate change causes irregular rainfall, growing dehydration of the landscape combined with high nutrient losses and extreme negative impacts for agriculture. Pollution of water and carbon dioxide emissions are today‘s main ecological threats but could be converted into valuable resources.
A future perspective for arid areas will be the use of unconventional water sources, especially:
- technologies for proper re-use of wastewater in irrigation,
- technologies for solar sea- or brackish water desalination and
- technologies of rainwater harvesting
Until today, greenhouse horticulture is used in arid areas to minimise water consumption, especially by increasing air humidity and by reducing wind velocity around the crops. Together with rainwater harvested on the greenhouse roof, this already allows to increase water productivity to a certain extend.
Different research activities, mostly accomplished under the European Community’s Research Framework Programmes FP5/FP6, show very promising approaches to further reduce the water demand and even to achieve fresh water production from greenhouses for urban purposes!

For further information, please click here (1) and here (2)