Greenhouses in China

China produces nearly half of the world’s vegetables- five times the U.S. share. China’s increase in vegetable acreage between 2000 and 2004 (5.7 million acres) exceeded the entire vegetable acreage in the United States (3.7 million acres). China’s vegetable production has grown mainly to meet domestic demand from its 1.3 billion citizens. There are over 7.3 million acres of greenhouse crops in China and the growing conditions in the greenhouses are conducive to fungal outbreaks making fungicide use necessary.

“Gray mold caused by B. cinerea has become one of the most economically important diseases, since the rapid development of greenhouse cultivation in the 1990s in eastern China. B. cinerea severely reduces the yield and quality of greenhouse vegetables such as eggplant, tomato, cucumber and pepper. Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces are the major vegetable production regions of eastern China, where unheated plastic greenhouses have been in use since 1998. Growers depend on regular fungicide treatments approximately every 7 days from November to May, besides some cultural practices such as ventilation to control the epidemic of B. cinerea.”

Authors: Zhang, C. Q., et al.
Affiliation: School of Agriculture and Food Science, Zhejiang Forest College, China.
Title: Evolution of resistance to different classes of fungicides in Botrytis cinerea from greenhouse vegetables in eastern China.
Source: Phytoparasitica. 2009. 37:351-359.