Abstract
New plant production systems with a low environmental impact (or a high resource utilization efficiency) are necessary for urban agriculture development. This study explores the benefits of closed plant production systems (CPPSs) with artificial lighting using a commercial CPPS at Osaka Prefecture University. Lettuce plants were produced continuously as a model for analyzing resource consumption rates, such as electricity, labor, water, and CO2, over two years. Monthly consumption rates of electricity, labor, water, and CO2 increased with the increase in the monthly production rate of the lettuce. The utilization efficiencies (=output/input) of electricity, energy, water, and CO2 were 1.0%, 1.0%, 4.0%, and 32.6%, respectively. If the commercial CPPS maintains the monthly production rate at a higher level, the energy utilization efficiency will increase. The number of air exchanges in a commercial CPPS should decrease to increase water and CO2 utilization efficiencies. Reusing water drained from the air conditioning system and employing a closed loop in the nutrient supply system also contribute to increasing the water utilization efficiency and lowering the environmental impact. Although a commercial CPPS still requires further improvements, it may be a good crop production system for urban agriculture provided resource utilization efficiencies improve.
Highlights
Two-thirds of the population are expected to live in urban areas by 2050 [1]
While urban planners understand the importance of urban agriculture [2], people living in urban areas require a new and sustainable system to be established for supplying food
Crop production systems used in urban agriculture must be highly productive [4]
Summary
Two-thirds of the population are expected to live in urban areas by 2050 [1]. Crop production systems used in urban agriculture must be highly productive [4]. A potential crop production system for urban agriculture is the closed plant production system (CPPS), which uses artificial lighting [5,6,7,8,9,10]. The structure of this system allows for increased resource utilization efficiency [7]. As the inside environment can be controlled without any weather interference, crop productivity can be increased [11]
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