Research progress on soil degradation and regulation of facility agriculture in China

Although China has become the first major country with facility cultivation in the world, soil degradation has become a bottleneck to sustainable development of modern facility agriculture. To understand the causes of soil degradation and facility agriculture characteristics, the development of appropriate measures for promoting healthy agricultural progress is important. This article reviewed five aspects of soil degradation under current facility agriculture in China. The reviewed aspects included the characteristics and causes of secondary salinization, acidification, micro-flora destroy, nutrient dislocation and harmful substance accumulation. Three major control (biological, agricultural and engineering) measures for improving facility agriculture soils were discussed. In view of the issues of facility agriculture soils in China, research was less at the exploration stage of formative reasons and control mechanisms; original technologies for soil improvement and control were still scarce; long-term large-scale greenhouse soil quality research and dynamic monitoring lagged behind other research activities; and soil degradation factors and interaction mechanisms had not been adequately evolved. The four key components of future research in facility agriculture included the construction of quality standard system of greenhouse soil; understanding soil quality degradation and evolution mechanisms, and establishing regulatory techniques; studying interaction among different degradation ways; and expanding new technology applications.