HydroTools DSS vers. 1.0

Optimal operation of greenhouse crops requires an appropriate management of fertigation, especially when the availability and/or the quality of irrigation water are limited and/or there are environmental constraints, such as those derived from Nitrate Directive in Europe. Hydrotools is a Decision Support System (DSS) developed in C# Microsoft .Net Frameworks 4.0 with the aim to support the management of greenhouse soilless cultures, such as the calculation of nutrient solution, the assessment of water use and nutrient leaching in different fertilization management scenarios. The system architecture is based on a central database (SQLite database engine), which stores both input and output data, and two separate calculation tools: SOLNUTRI, which calculates the salt concentrations of stock solutions used to prepare the nutrient solutions fed to the crop with a pre-set ion concentration; SIMULHYDRO, which simulates crop plant nutrient uptake and the variations of the ionic composition of the nutrient solution in open, closed and semi-closed soilless systems. The DSS can assist the grower in daily operational management of fertigation as well as for off-line (prior-to-planting) simulation, for instance to compare - in terms of water and nutrients use efficiency - different fertigation strategies, growing system layouts, water qualities and/or crop species (analysis of the scenario).