Abstract
Plant factories with artificial lighting (PFALs), with well-insulated and airtight structures, enable the production of large quantities of high-quality plants year-round while achieving high resource use efficiency. However, despite the controlled environment in PFALs, variations in plant individuals have been found, which affect productivity in PFAL operations. Plant phenotyping plays a crucial role in understanding how the surrounding microenvironment affects variations in plant phenotypes. In the current study, a modular phenotyping system for seedling production was developed, focusing on practicality and scalability in commercial PFALs. Experiments on seedlings, which strongly affect productivity, were conducted to obtain cotyledon unfolding time and the time series projected area of cotyledons and true leaves of individual seedlings of romaine lettuce (Lactuca sativa L. var. longifolia), using RGB images. This was also undertaken to analyze how the surrounding microenvironment of photosynthetic photon flux densities and nutrients affect growth variations for plant cohort research. In agreement with the actual measurements, variations in seedling growth were identified even under similar microenvironments. Furthermore, the results demonstrated larger variations in seedlings with higher relative growth. Aiming for simplified interactions of phenotypes with the microenvironment, management, and genotype, seedling selection and breeding with plant production in PFALs may enable plant uniformity and higher productivity.
Highlights
Plant factories with artificial lighting (PFALs), with an almost airtight and well-insulated structure, have the potential to enable the production of large quantities of high-quality plants year-round while achieving high efficiency of resource utilization [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
To elucidate the variations in the growth of cotyledons and initial true leaves, and how this is affected by the photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) and nutrients, which are the essential factors for the initial development of plants, it is crucial to measure cotyledon unfolding time and the time series projected leaf area together with ground truth measurements, and analyze how the microenvironment of PPFD at individual seedlings and nutrients affects individual growth
To analyze the variations in the growth of cotyledons and initial true leaves as affected by horizontal PPFD at individual seedlings and nutrients and water, experiments on the initial stage of seedlings were conducted from cotyledon unfolding to 216 h after sowing (HAS)
Summary
Plant factories with artificial lighting (PFALs), with an almost airtight and well-insulated structure, have the potential to enable the production of large quantities of high-quality plants year-round while achieving high efficiency of resource utilization [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. To elucidate the variations in the growth of cotyledons and initial true leaves, and how this is affected by the PPFD and nutrients, which are the essential factors for the initial development of plants, it is crucial to measure cotyledon unfolding time and the time series projected leaf area together with ground truth measurements, and analyze how the microenvironment of PPFD at individual seedlings and nutrients affects individual growth. This was undertaken to analyze how the surrounding microenvironment of PPFD and nutrients affects the variations in the growth of individual seedlings for plant cohort research. Two trays on the right side (Trays 1 and 2) of four in the MSPS were used, and the remaining two trays on the left (Trays 3 and 4) were filled with the same plants simultaneously for another analysis (Figure 1a–c)
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