Row cover / Floating Row cover / Crop cover
Floating Row cover or
Crop cover is a garden fabric usually made of polymer hydrocrbon, used over the
crop row directly above the crop to protect it from biotic stresses like insect
pest attacks and abiotic stresses like hailstorm, freezing weather, frost etc. Usually
non-wooven poly-fabric of 10-50 GSM density is used as Row cover or Crop cover
in fruit and vegetable farming. Either single rows or a number of rows at a
time are cover.
Fruit bagging system adopted in Israel and Japan
Low Tunnel.
Low tunnels
are very much similar to ‘row cover or crop cover’, but here the poly-sheet (Clear plastic films or nets) is stretched over low (up to 1.0 m high above
crop) hoops made of steel wires, bamboo strips or cane.It provides
protection against low temperature and frost, winds, and insect pests. Polyethylene
films of about 50 micron thickness with ventilating holes (4% of surface area)
are used. Recently use
of non-woven spun bounded porous lighter films also is practiced. Low tunnels
permit earl crops with significantly higher yields