Once customers taste a vine-ripened greenhouse grown tomato, they're generally hooked. Compared to an artificially ripened tomato, there's no comparison. After all, who wants to eat something as hard as a baseball and just about as tasty. Another factor in this growing market demand is that consumers like the fact that most greenhouse tomato crops are locally grown and produced with limited pesticide input. This can be traced to the advances made in pest control in recent years.
Growers can now choose from a variety of non-chemical insect and disease control options.
Growers are using biological control techniques as an alternative to insecticide applications. For example, a small predatory wasp is used to control whiteflies, the number one insect pest of greenhouse tomatoes. The wasps are released inside greenhouses at the beginning of the season, and present no damage to the tomato crop. As soon as whiteflies, and certain other insects harmful to tomatoes show up, the wasps go to work and act as a very effective whitefly zapper. Given the humid growing environment, diseases are often a real threat to greenhouse tomatoes.