Most of the greenhouses in the Kingdom are still grown in soil. Soil cultivation increases soil-borne diseases and accumulates salinity. Moreover, the present conventional soil-based growing system wastes a lot of freshwater due to runoff and deep percolation.

In arid countries, rapid evaporation from the soil surface may also lead to salinity problems. Soilless cultivation systems in the greenhouses have internationally become a very common practice to overcome the problems associated with soil-bound growing.

Many cultural and crop management practices could be introduced for protected cultivation to improve productivity and quality with the minimum environmental negative impact, and to significantly boost the success and economic return, starting from the selection of crops/varieties, seedlings health and grafting, selection of the best planting dates, mulching, plant density, training, and pruning, etc. Therefore, Estidamah research themes are focused on Integrated Crop Management (ICM) under different greenhouse technologies.