• Submitted by: manso
• Business and Economy
• 01 / 07 / 2011

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Written by ACN.Thursday, 06 January 2011 09:40. LAS TUNAS, Cuba.- In 2010, the eastern Cuban province of Las Tunas attained the highest annual harvest of protected crops with the production of about 320 tons of vegetables.

Engineer Adel Parra, the head of the only unit of this kind in the province --located in the municipality of Puerto Padre--, told ACN news agency that the harvest of watermelons, for the first time since the inauguration of this facility in 2006, contributed to attaining such results.

The main crops harvested in the two hectares, that the 30 protected houses cover, are tomato, pepper, and cucumber. The center also has a semi-protected hectare for harvesting lettuce, beet, cabbage, scallion and other vegetables.

This modern technology used in agriculture offers many advantages like the use of a net that prevents the direct impact of the sun, the rain, the wind, and the insects.

The use of limited watering and the supply of fertilizers together with water offer better absorption of nutrients, and the crops are planted on enriched soil with humus and other organic fertilizers.

The system of protected crops was implemented several decades ago in Europe to avoid the negative effects of winter, and it has expanded to tropical regions to protect the harvests from the sun and the heavy rains.

This method was first used in Cuba at the beginning of the 21 centuryin order to increase the agricultural production and to gradually reduce the increasingly more expensive imports of food.

Source: www.lademajagua.co.cu/ingles/index.php/cuba-news/