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Environmental impact of greenhouse tomato production in France

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Abstract

The environmental impact of greenhouse production in France is poorly documented. Environmental benefits versus drawbacks of greenhouse production are not well known. Assessments that intregrate pesticide toxicology and transfer of mass and energy are scarce. Here, we compared the main types of tomato production, heated, year-round production in plastic houses or glasshouses, and seasonal production under polytunnel. Environmental impacts where assessed by life cycle analysis. Analyses were performed after the construction of a database relating the integrality of matter and energy fluxes, regarding the structure of the system, the inputs for production, and the waste products. Results show that greenhouse heating had the highest environmental impacts, including toxicological impact. For instance, the mean environmental impact of heated crops under plastic or in glasshouses was 4.5 times higher than in tunnels. Furthermore, pesticides in tunnels had a 3- to 6-fold higher impact in terms of terrestrial or aquatic ecotoxicology or human toxicology. Our results were compared with data from other temperate production regions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was carried out with the financial support of the French ANR-05-PADD-09, EcoSerre project for the years 2006–2008 and the European Network for durable exploitation of crop protection strategies (ENDURE) FP6-2005-FOOD-4-A project no. 031499.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INRA, UR880 Unité de Recherches Intégrées en Horticulture, 400, route des Chappes, BP 167, 06903, Sophia-Antipolis, France

    Thierry Boulard & Richard Brun

  2. Physico-chimie de l’Atmosphère, Laboratoire des Matériaux, Surfaces et Procédés pour la Catalyse, UMR 7515 CNRS-Université de Strasbourg, 1 rue Blessig, 67084, Strasbourg Cedex, France

    Caroline Raeppel

  3. INRA, UR 1115 Plantes et Systèmes de Cultures Horticoles, Domaine Saint Paul, Site Agroparc, 84914, Avignon Cedex, France

    François Lecompte

  4. Agroscope Reckenholz-Tänikon Research Station ART, 8046, Zurich, Switzerland

    Frank Hayer & Gérard Gaillard

  5. DBPA, Dipartimento di Biologia delle Piante Agrarie, University of Pisa, Viale delle Piagge 23, 56124, Pisa, Italy

    G. Carmassi

Authors
  1. Thierry Boulard
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  2. Caroline Raeppel
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  3. Richard Brun
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  4. François Lecompte
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  5. Frank Hayer
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  6. G. Carmassi
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  7. Gérard Gaillard
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Correspondence to Thierry Boulard.

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Boulard, T., Raeppel, C., Brun, R. et al. Environmental impact of greenhouse tomato production in France. Agron. Sustain. Dev. 31, 757–777 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-011-0031-3

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