Plant Factory With LED Grow Light, The New Trend In Agricultural Development
Plant Factory And Its Social Significance
Plant Factory, in a broad sense, refers to a system of plant cultivation systems that fully or partially controls the environmental conditions required for plant growth to grow completely or partially unaffected by the natural environment. Its main feature is that the planting space is closed, and the artificial light completely replaces the sunlight. The production factors (carbon dioxide, oxygen, temperature, humidity, fertilizer nutrients, illumination, etc.) are fully and accurately controlled. The whole year is continuously cultivated, and the production cycle is fast. Customized by a plan, etc. The whole process is carried out on the factory production line, which makes the product more refined, homogenized and productive.
According to statistics, the global population will exceed 9 billion by 2050. The global issues of the 21st century are four aspects of food, resources, environment, and quality of life. Deterioration of the natural environment includes soil compaction caused by human factors, soil salinization, heavy metal pollution, severe haze, and desertification.
Plant factories can solve the supply of vegetables in extreme environments. For example, soldiers working in desert conditions, workers working on offshore platforms need to regularly distribute vegetables and other foods, and only vegetables that are resistant to storage, less Fresh leafy vegetables. In addition, the world’s major powers are scrambling to study various technical means of exploring space. Plant factories are an important research topic.
The Development Direction of The Combination of Plant Factories And Lighting Industry
The light sources used in the development of plant factories mainly include high-pressure sodium lamps, fluorescent lamps, metal halide lamps, incandescent lamps, etc. The outstanding disadvantages of these light sources are high energy consumption, high operating costs, and energy consumption costs accounting for 50% of the total operating costs. -60%. In recent years, the LED light source developed not only emits monochromatic light with narrow light waves, but also can arbitrarily combine light sources according to plant needs, and the LED is a cold light source with low heat generation characteristics, which can illuminate plants at close range and improve space utilization. Providing a reasonable light environment for plant growth, it is very suitable for the cultivation of plant plants in multiple layers.
Analysis of The Needs And Ppplication Characteristics of Plant Lighting Equipment in Plant Factories:
The basic requirements for the application of LED light source in plant factories are mainly reflected in three aspects, namely spectral performance — both to ensure the photosynthetic quality of plant photosynthesis, and to reduce the invalid spectrum and energy consumption as much as possible; luminous efficiency — The amount of photosynthetically active radiation emitted is relatively high compared to the power consumption; the service life — long use time, low light decay, and relatively low price.
There are three main factors affecting the growth of crops grown in plant factories by LED light sources:
1.Light intensity — the intensity of light. It will not only affect the photosynthesis intensity but also change the shape of the crop, such as flowering stage, internode length, stem thickness, and leaf size thickness;
2.The photo-spectral distribution has an important influence on plant photosynthesis and morphogenesis. The plants on the earth are constantly adapting to solar radiation during long-term evolution, and different species have different light-selective absorption characteristics.
3.Photoperiod-photoperiod characteristics are closely related to the number of illumination hours. Different crops need a certain number of illumination hours to complete the photoperiod, and the opposite can also inhibit the flowering and fruiting of the crop by changing the illumination time.
The impact of a LED light source on the construction and use cost of plant factory. At present, the cost of the LED light source in plant construction accounts for 20%-50% of the construction cost, and the compression space is large; the installation efficiency, maintenance replacement frequency, power saving ratio, Attenuation speed, etc. will affect the actual use cost.
Future Development of Plants Combined With Plant Lighting Technology:
The cost performance of LED has been significantly improved in the past few years. Therefore, the industry of LED-based artificial light-type plant factories has also developed rapidly in recent years. It can be convinced and predicted that LEDs are based on LEDs with increasing cost performance. The artificial light plant factory will have a broader development space. The rapid rise of plant factories has also prompted the plant lighting industry to move forward in a favorable direction of research and development, standardization, and close cooperation between industries.
In order to promote the efficient and healthy development of LED artificial light plant factories, the following problems need to be solved:
1.In-depth study of the effects of artificial light sources on plant growth in plant factories. The complexity of plant photobiology research has made the mechanism of photobiology unclear so far, especially in the field of molecular biology. First of all, there are many kinds of plants and varieties, and photobiological needs are very complicated. Secondly, the wavelength of plant effect light is complex, involving many typical bands, and the individual effects and complex effects require long-term research. Finally, the most complicated is plant development. The output and quality indicators are diverse, the light control is difficult, and the single-index and composite indicators are complex. This requires close cooperation between the two industries to promote the solution.
2.Formulation and implementation of relevant standards for lighting fixtures for plant factories. Compared with lighting fixtures for homes, shopping malls, etc., LED agricultural use, especially for plant-specific lighting fixtures, still has product clutter, irregular production design, lack of uniform product standards and quality management issues. In addition to the lack of scientific uniform specifications in terms of light quality regulation and light intensity, there is a lack of design specifications for protection against electricity, water, and corrosion in high-humidity environments of plant factories. Some lamps have a short service life and potential safety hazards.
3.The improvement of technology research and development investment and intellectual property protection system. At present, there are many small and medium-sized enterprises producing low-end products in LED plant lighting fixtures, lacking independent intellectual property rights and systematic research, which makes LED plant lighting products uneven, industrialization and standardization are low, and lack of market competitiveness.
High-end facility agriculture is the development trend of modern agricultural planting, and plant factories are the typical representative of this new concept and technical system. It can realize the high-efficiency agricultural system for continuous crop production through high-precision environmental control in the facility. It is the automatic control of the environmental conditions of plant growth by using a computer. It is a subversion of traditional agriculture, making plants grow free or rarely subject to natural conditions. The labor-saving production mode that is restricted is the advanced stage of agricultural development.
In the next three to five years, more industrial resources will enter, more capital will enter, and with the introduction of government support policies, the development of plant factories will enter a period of vigorous development. The development of plant factories has benefited from the good early stage of the LED industry, and the LED plant lighting or agricultural lighting field that has been or has been deployed by various LED companies. It is foreseeable that the cost of plant lighting is reduced and the professionalism is improved. As well as the continuous professional development and strategic cooperation of other related upstream industries, the plant factory will flourish, benefiting the general trend of consumption upgrading, and can solve part of the shortage of energy and cultivated land.
XinJia is also constantly striving and innovating to provide customers with more high-quality LED grow lights.
Want to know more about plant factories?Browse the following articles：
《How To Build A Succuessful Plant Factory?》
《LED Plant Factory-A New Dirextion For The Development of Smart Agriculture》