The problems and development course of the Russian horticulture

Horticulture is one of the most important agricultural industries providing the population with fruits and berries that are the indispensable sources of bioactive compounds. Year round provision of the population with fresh fruits and vegetables, the high-quality products of their processing is important for solving the problem of improving the quality of life, human physical health and the national health in general [2,3].

It is a well-known fact that the Russian horticultural production (due to the ecological and geographical specifics and national horticultural traditions) is much richer in bioactive and particularly anti-oxidant compounds in comparison with imported products. At the same time, the Russian population suffers from a great deficit of fresh fruits and berries, primarily caused by the low efficiency of Russian horticulture [3,4].

Presently, the Russian horticulture is going through a difficult period for both objective and subjective reasons, such as [1]:

• negative natural and climatic conditions over the great part of the Russian territory and the ability of perennial plants to accumulate negative consequences of the stressors impact;

• outdated and very rundown material and technical resources of most former horticultural farms;

• outdated technologies for the existing perennial plantations cultivation.

Nowadays the Russian horticulture requires a solution of the following primarily issues:

• to create the technological systems to produce rehabilitated planting material of horticultural plants based on the monitoring and management of the phytosanitary condition of the plantations in controlled and natural environments;

• to form the operated adaptive agrocoenosi based on the principles of the intensive agro-landscape and biological agriculture, while using the geo-information micro-zoning, eco-resistant assortment, narrow-differentiated precision technological systems;

• to stabilize the productivity and increase the yield of the plantations based on the management of the vegetational production processes at all stages of organogenesis;

• to manage the functional condition of fruits both in the pre-harvesting and post-harvesting periods, to create long-storage systems for products and to make them available for customers without quality loss;

• to develop mechanical and automated technologies in horticulture.

In this connection, the horticultural science needs a new approach for creation of agro-technologies based on combining different fields of knowledge, i.e. creation of convergent technologies.

Convergent technologies are the products of information and communication technologies confluence along with biotechnologies, nanotechnologies and cognitive technologies. The mentioned components include the following directions:

• in the field of nano- and biotechnologies: management of vegetational biosystems on the genetic, cellular, organismal and cenosis levels;

• in the field of information and communication technologies: modelling of vegetational biosystems vital processes; simulation of agrophytocenosi and agrotechnologies; automatisation of managing agrophytocenosi vital processes;

• in the field of cognitive technologies: the study of interaction between biosystems, biocenosi, agrocenosi and creation of the information databases and banks of knowledge.

The results of the long-term research performed by the Institute's scientists have enabled to develop the project of the horticultural industry development in Russia. This implies three levels of management: organismal, cenosis and industrial ones.

The plant's management on the organismal level:

• monitoring of the plant bodies' response to the exogenetic exposure at the level of molecular, cellular and tissular modulations;

• maintenance of the plant body's functional condition by selective impact on the active centers of metabolic systems;

• management of the plants multiplication processes in the controlled environment with the help of nutritional medium modulations subject to autogenous characteristics of plants;

• monitoring and modelling of the vegetational tissues mineral content based on management of the absorption processes and transportation of the elements in the plant;

• the directed genome selection for creation of eco-resistant genotypes with pre-set parameters.

Horticultural management at the agro-ecosystem level:

• simulation of agrophytocenosis on the basis of agro-ecological monitoring of plantations and territories;

• formation of the adaptive assortment of plantations based on the geoinformation analysis of the territories;

• stabilization of the plantations productivity based on management of plants production processes;

• management of the phytosanitary conditions and state of plantations under climatic change with account of the plant-pest interaction;

• microzoning of plant nutrition technologies and fertilization with account of the variety and age-related needs;

• automatization and mechanisation of the horticultural processes

Horticultural management at the industry level:

• organizational economic and territorial modelling of the horticultural industry;

• HR management by means of modelling the educational system;

• Agricultural production management on the basis of marketing research and logistics.

It should be pointed out that the rational use of the scientific resources, material and technical base and the financial resources of many institutes in the system of the Russian academy of science is needed for the effective implementation of the suggested program for the scientific horticultural development.