Design and Construction of Hydroponic Greenhouse of Cucumber Equipped with Fuzzy Control System

Greenhouses should provide a controlled environment to produce plants with sufficient sunlight, temperature, and humidity. Better growth conditions in the greenhouses are mainly achieved by maintaining the optimum indoor temperature compared to the outdoor temperature of the greenhouse. The objective of this study is design, construction and evaluation of a fuzzy control system for a research greenhouse with capability of measuring, control and monitoring of greenhouse environmental conditions. Greenhouses control variables are air temperature, ambient relative humidity, light intensity, CO2 levels which are monitored and controlled by operators (heating system, cooling system, carbon dioxide regulation system, ventilation and humidity regulation system). In this study, hydroponic greenhouse was first designed and constructed. Heating and cooling equipment as well as needed sensors were installed. Then, a fuzzy control system was designed. Finally, by considering information on the appropriate environmental conditions of the hydroponic greenhouse of cucumber, the values of temperature, humidity, light and carbon dioxide are considered as fuzzy system inputs and the rules of the fuzzy system were adjusted so that the environmental conditions of the greenhouse were also fuzzy defined according to the input data. The results of the system evaluation showed that fuzzy control can well control the greenhouse environmental conditions.