What is the main commercial risk with coriander?

Bolting. The crop moves quickly from harvestable leaf to a flowering stem, driven by temperature and day length rather than by the calendar. Once bolting shows on the leaf the batch is unsaleable, so the value is in clearing the crop on schedule rather than in growing it larger.

Why is coriander grown as part of a mixed herb programme?

It rarely justifies a house on its own. Coriander widens the range of a mixed nutrient-film house, sharing one water system, one climate and one pack line with the other short herbs, with channels reassigned between crops as the programme changes.

Coriander — DutchGreenhouses

Q: What does growing coriander ask of the greenhouse design?

Flexibility and evenness. Channels that can be reassigned between crops, a nutrient system that suits several short herbs at once, and a layout that lets one crop be cleared without disturbing the ones beside it — with a climate even enough that a batch arrives ready as one, not in two halves.

Coriander sells into cuisines with steady year-round demand, and it is one of the herbs a mixed nutrient-film house adds to widen its range rather than growing alone. The leaf is the product in most markets, and it is graded on freshness and on the absence of any sign the plant has begun to bolt.

What the crop needs

The crop is short-cycle and grown in nutrient film. Its defining commercial risk is how quickly it moves from harvestable leaf to a flowering stem, which is driven by temperature and day length rather than by the calendar. Scheduling is therefore the main control the grower has, and a house running coriander is planning plantings as much as it is managing climate.

Part of a herb programme

Coriander earns its place inside a wider herb programme rather than on its own. The design case is a nutrient-film system whose channels can be reassigned between crops, a climate that suits several short herbs at once, and a layout that lets one crop be cleared without disturbing the ones beside it.

DutchGreenhouses® designs the structure, climate and irrigation around the herb programme as a whole, so a mixed house can carry several short crops on one system. Get in touch to discuss a herb project.

Coriander

The varieties

Coriander / cilantro

A fast herb that bolts if it is held too long.

A leaf bought for its scent

Coriander is bought almost entirely for aroma. It is added raw at the end of a dish, in small amounts, and its whole job is to smell of itself. That aroma is volatile, and it is at its strongest while the plant is still standing in the channel.

The leaf is also thin, and thin leaves lose water quickly. Coriander shows its age sooner than most herbs on a shelf. It goes limp, then dark, and it is graded down long before it is inedible. A journey measured in days spends most of the saleable life of the crop before the buyer ever sees it.

Grown near the market, the crop is cut and delivered inside the window it is good for. Plantings are cleared on schedule rather than held back to fill a shipment, which is the same discipline the crop already asks of the grower.