Abstract
Smart greenhouse farming has emerged as one of the solutions to global food security, where farming productivity can be managed and improved in an automated manner. While it is known that plant development is highly dependent on the quantity and quality of light exposure, the specific impact of the different light properties is yet to be fully understood. In this study, using the model plant Arabidopsis, we systematically investigate how six different light properties (i.e., photoperiod, light offset, intensity, phase of dawn, duration of twilight and period) would affect plant development i.e., flowering time and hypocotyl (seedling stem) elongation using an established mathematical model of the plant circadian system relating light input to flowering time and hypocotyl elongation outputs for smart greenhouse application. We vary each of the light properties individually and then collectively to understand their effect on plant development. Our analyses show in comparison to the nominal value, the photoperiod of 18 hours, period of 24 hours, no light offset, phase of dawn of 0 hour, duration of twilight of 0.05 hour and a reduced light intensity of 1% are able to improve by at least 30% in days to flower (from 32.52 days to 20.61 days) and hypocotyl length (from 1.90 mm to 1.19mm) with the added benefit of reducing energy consumption by at least 15% (from 4.27 MWh/year to 3.62 MWh/year). These findings could provide beneficial solutions to the smart greenhouse farming industries in terms of achieving enhanced productivity while consuming less energy.
Highlights
The increase in the global population together with the surge of demand in the food industry has created concerns about food security, prompting a need to explore sustainable agriculture practices to solve this problem [1]
In this study, using the model plant Arabidopsis, we present a systematic framework of artificial light management across six light properties for optimal plant development with the added benefit of improved energy efficiency
In order for us to carry out a systematic analysis of the light management on plant development, we employ a well-established mathematical model of the plant circadian system developed by Seaton et al, [24], as this model is the only known model to date that comprehensively relates plant circadian system to two phenotypes namely, flowering time and hypocotyl elongation, which will act as a proxy for plant development
Summary
The increase in the global population together with the surge of demand in the food industry has created concerns about food security, prompting a need to explore sustainable agriculture practices to solve this problem [1]. One of the emerging solutions to address this problem is the concept of precision and smart greenhouse farming [2,3,4]), where the productivity of farming is managed and improved by using technologies involving sensors, actuators and control systems [5,6,7]) The application of these technologies in smart greenhouse.
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