4 January 2025 – PSARIS Growers in Crete Trained on NUTRISENSE – Advancing Sustainable Fertilisation Practices in Greenhouse Crops

On 4 January 2025, the members of the Agricultural Cooperative PSARIS (https://www.aspsaris.gr/) were trained during a 4-hours course on the use of the Decision Support System NUTRISENSE (www.nutrisense.online). The training took place in the facilities of the cooperative in Crete. NUTRISENSE is one of the DSS deployed by ECONUTRI to reduce nutrient losses and control pollution of water resources caused by over-fertilisation in horticultural crops and especially in greenhouse crops. The AC PSARIS is a small but very dynamic and innovative agricultural cooperative producing and exporting out of season greenhouse cucumber to North-European countries. The Cooperative exports from November to April each year.

Most growers of the cooperative cultivate on the greenhouse soil, while a small number of producers have switched over to soilless cropping systems. Considering this fact, most of the training time was devoted to training at SOIL NUTRISENSE. Many growers of the cooperative have already registered to the NUTRISENSE DSS and have started using it. During the presentation of the DSS on January 4, detailed instructions for the use of NUTRISENSE were given and a demonstration application was presented. The main objective of this training was to enable the growers of the cooperative to effectively use all capabilities of NUTRISENSE.

NUTRISENSE supports the producers of the cooperative in designing the fertilisation programmes they apply to their crops. With the use of NUTRISENSE and the soil analyses carried out (as they are necessary for the application of NUTRISENSE) it was found that in most greenhouses there was systematic over-fertilisation, which has led to excessively high levels of nutrients in the soil but also to substantial soil salinisation. Through NUTRISENSE, several producers have streamlined their fertilisation programmes and have already recorded a significant reduction of the excessive nutrient levels and salinity in their latest soil analyses.

About 25 growers participated in this training course.