Sustainability in Horticulture Production - Opportunity and Challenge for Innovative Technologies in Asia and Europe

Innovative technologies for production of horticultural commodities should be sustainable, that means they should follow the three pillars philosophy - economic growth, environmental protection and social progress. Very important is a 'Land Suitability Analysis and Evaluation' in order to find out the appropriate land for the different horticultural crops. Very often, farming systems are very traditional, but all commodities, fruits, ornamentals and vegetables should be produced with efficient, sustainable and innovative technologies. Technologies are necessary to improve the production safety also under unfavourable cultivation conditions in all steps of crop production. Suitable method for plant propagation is important, in case of generative methods to secure high germination rate or vegetative in this case preferable using tissue culture. Use of plant growth promoters are often helpful in particular under stress conditions as high temperature, high salt concentration in the soil or drought. Regarding plant protection, some biological control methods will be presented with use of humic acid and plant oils. One possibility is using protected cultivation systems. Sometimes the soil conditions are not suitable for intensive and sustainable crop production use of soilless cultivation methods are recommended as Substrate Culture with trickle irrigation, Aeroponic and the newer system is the Aquaponics. Finally, will be highlighted in some examples the interaction between growing conditions, in particular the light condition, and the internal compounds of vegetables, in this regard the nutritive value and marketable quality.