IntroductionMany modern greenhouses have been imported in China as show-cases of modern agriculture from Western European countries in the past 30 years. However, few of such showcase greenhouses have been economically successful in China. These greenhouses consume too much energy. One major cause for the discrepancy in performance of these production systems in Europe and in China is the significant climatic differences between China (particularly in the subtropical regions) and the countries where the systems were developed [1]. Therefore, it's necessary to develop suitable control strategies for the greenhouses in China. However, it's inappropriate to test new control methods in an actual greenhouse directly, because it's laborious and costly, and it even causes damage to the actuators and crops. It's better to test new control methods in simulation at first, which is convenient and safe. The premise is that the mechanistic models of greenhouse microclimate must be built in advance. The purpose of this paper was to develop suitable mechanistic models of greenhouse air temperature and humidity, according to the characteristics of actuators in most greenhouses in China.The mechanistic model of greenhouse microclimate is a group of dynamic energy and mass balance equations, the function of which is to simulate the dynamic behaviors of greenhouse microclimate. Many mechanistic models have been developed, such as GDGCM model [2,3] There are also some mechanistic models which just describe the dynamic behaviors of greenhouse microclimate under a particular operating state, for example, Teitel and Tann studied the transient response of the greenhouse air temperature and humidity under the