Total Crop Management Improves Students' Understanding of Greenhouse Crop Production

Learning the principles of ornamental plant production can be accomplished through the delivery of lectures and assignment of various types of homework and projects.  However, the ability of students to implement many of the principles learned in classroom-based ornamental plant production courses in a greenhouse production setting is not assured. Total Crop Management (TCM) is the process of measuring and monitoring key aspects of ornamental greenhouse crop production, including: plant growth and development, greenhouse environment, growing substrate and irrigation water quality, and pest and pathogen pressure. The objectives of our research were to quantify the impact of using TCM in greenhouse crop production laboratories to increase the student’s understanding of the principles used in greenhouse crop production. In 2011 at Purdue University (PU) and 2013 at PU and Iowa State University (ISU), students enrolled in upper-division greenhouse crop production courses were responsible for measuring the height of containerized plants and substrate pH and EC, recording the average daily temperature and daily light integral from a datalogger, and performing insect counts from yellow sticky cards. During each laboratory period students evaluated the data in group discussions and made crop production decisions together. Students were given a pre- and post-semester self-assessment questionnaire asking them to evaluate their understanding of the principles of TCM using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 5 (“strongly agree”). For all three courses, the overall understanding of the principles of TCM increased from 2.3 (2013, ISU) to 3.2 (2011, PU) before the course to 4.2 (2013, ISU) to 4.8 (2011, PU) at the end of the course. Similarly, when asked about the individual components involved in TCM (e.g., monitoring the greenhouse environment, crop height, substrate and water quality, etc.), there were significant increases in understanding for almost every area in all three classes. Based on our results, the implementation of TCM in greenhouse crop production courses may serve as a strategy to increase student understanding of the principles and strategies involved in TCM.