Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
5.2
3.7
Journals
Agronomy
Special Issues
New Technologies to Enable a Sustainable Vertical Farming Industry
share announcement

New Technologies to Enable a Sustainable Vertical Farming Industry

A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Farming Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2021) | Viewed by 38481

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Krishna Nemali

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA
Interests: CEA; hydroponics; plant physiology; smart sensors

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Vertical farming has been widely publicized as the farming system of the future. Increased productivity, decreased water and pesticide use, increased availability of locally grown and fresh food, increased employment opportunities, and production of food crops in harsh environments are some of the advantages of vertical farming. Because of this, many new companies are investing in vertical farming. However, these companies are quickly realizing that the operational costs are high and profits are low in this industry. Many of the establishments are becoming non-profitable enterprises within the first three years of operation. This situation is challenging the sustainability of the vertical farming industry.

This Special Issue will focus on “New Technologies to Enable a Sustainable Vertical Farming Industry”. The issue is intended to cover a wide range of topics related to increasing resource-use efficiency, productivity, crop value, and profits in vertical farming. These include optimizing the growth environment, maximizing crop yield, monitoring or modeling crop growth and physiology, novel production systems, increasing food safety, and enriching phytochemicals in crops. We welcome original research articles, reviews, and opinion letters.

Dr. Krishna Nemali
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • controlled environment agriculture
  • food-borne pathogens
  • hydroponics
  • indoor agriculture
  • leafy greens
  • LED lighting
  • plant factory
  • remote sensing
  • vitamins

Published Papers (4 papers)

Download All Papers
Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

Jump to: Review

17 pages, 6622 KiB  
Article
Energy Efficient Lighting in Plant Factories: Addressing Utilance
by Jens Balasus, Janis Blank, Sebastian Babilon, Tim Hegemann and Tran Quoc Khanh
Agronomy 2021, 11(12), 2570; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy11122570 - 17 Dec 2021
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2957
Abstract
Vertical farming is considered to play a crucial role in future food supply. Until today, the high amount of electrical energy required for artificial lighting has been problematic in this context. Various possibilities for increasing efficiency through adapted lighting conditions have been and [...] Read more.
Vertical farming is considered to play a crucial role in future food supply. Until today, the high amount of electrical energy required for artificial lighting has been problematic in this context. Various possibilities for increasing efficiency through adapted lighting conditions have been and are being investigated. However, comparably little attention is paid to increasing utilance, i.e., the amount of photons that can effectively be used by the plant. In this work, a novel targeted lighting strategy is therefore proposed that allows for a dynamic adaptation of the luminaires’ light distribution to match the effective crop size at each stage of plant growth in a fully-automated manner. It is shown that the resulting utilance can significantly be increased compared to standard full-coverage lighting. Moreover, it is found that the proposed strategy is likely to consume less than half of the electrical energy usually required for the latter. An additional increase in system efficiency can be prognosticated and the potential energy savings are estimated based on assumptions of future LED generations derived from literature. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Technologies to Enable a Sustainable Vertical Farming Industry)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

13 pages, 2506 KiB  
Article
Modeling Natural Light Availability in Skyscraper Farms
by Michael Eaton, Kale Harbick, Timothy Shelford and Neil Mattson
Agronomy 2021, 11(9), 1684; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy11091684 - 24 Aug 2021
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2614
Abstract
Lighting is a major component of energy consumption in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) operations. Skyscraper farms (multilevel production in buildings with transparent glazing) have been proposed as alternatives to greenhouse or plant factories (opaque warehouses) to increase space-use efficiency while accessing some natural [...] Read more.
Lighting is a major component of energy consumption in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) operations. Skyscraper farms (multilevel production in buildings with transparent glazing) have been proposed as alternatives to greenhouse or plant factories (opaque warehouses) to increase space-use efficiency while accessing some natural light. However, there are no previous models on natural light availability and distribution in skyscraper farms. This study employed climate-based daylight modeling software and the Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) dataset to investigate the effects of building geometry and context shading on the availability and spatial distribution of natural light in skyscraper farms in Los Angeles (LA) and New York City (NYC). Electric energy consumption for supplemental lighting in 20-storey skyscraper farms to reach a daily light integral target was calculated using simulation results. Natural lighting in our baseline skyscraper farms without surrounding buildings provides 13% and 15% of the light required to meet a target of 17 mol·m−2·day−1. More elongated buildings may meet up to 27% of the lighting requirements with natural light. However, shading from surrounding buildings can reduce available natural light considerably; in the worst case, natural light only supplies 5% of the lighting requirements. Overall, skyscraper farms require between 4 to 11 times more input for lighting than greenhouses per crop canopy area in the same location. We conclude that the accessibility of natural light in skyscraper farms in dense urban settings provides little advantage over plant factories. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Technologies to Enable a Sustainable Vertical Farming Industry)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

14 pages, 3102 KiB  
Article
Differential Effects of Low Light Intensity on Broccoli Microgreens Growth and Phytochemicals
by Meifang Gao, Rui He, Rui Shi, Yiting Zhang, Shiwei Song, Wei Su and Houcheng Liu
Agronomy 2021, 11(3), 537; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy11030537 - 12 Mar 2021
Cited by 27 | Viewed by 4827
Abstract
To produce high-quality broccoli microgreens, suitable light intensity for growth and phytochemical contents of broccoli microgreens in an artificial light plant factory were studied. Broccoli microgreens were irradiated under different photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD): 30, 50, 70 and 90 μmol·m−2·s [...] Read more.
To produce high-quality broccoli microgreens, suitable light intensity for growth and phytochemical contents of broccoli microgreens in an artificial light plant factory were studied. Broccoli microgreens were irradiated under different photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD): 30, 50, 70 and 90 μmol·m−2·s−1 with red: green: blue = 1:1:1 light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The broccoli microgreens grown under 50 μmol·m−2·s−1 had the highest fresh weight, dry weight, and moisture content, while the phytochemical contents were the lowest. With increasing light intensity, the chlorophyll content increased, whereas the carotenoid content decreased. The contents of soluble protein, soluble sugar, free amino acid, flavonoid, vitamin C, and glucosinolates except for progoitrin in broccoli microgreens were higher under 70 μmol·m−2·s−1. Overall, 50 μmol·m−2·s−1 was the optimal light intensity for enhancement of growth of broccoli microgreens, while 70 μmol·m−2·s−1 was more feasible for improving the phytochemicals of broccoli microgreens in an artificial light plant factory. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Technologies to Enable a Sustainable Vertical Farming Industry)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Review

Jump to: Research

15 pages, 1817 KiB  
Review
Vertical Farming: The Only Way Is Up?
by Thijs Van Gerrewey, Nico Boon and Danny Geelen
Agronomy 2022, 12(1), 2; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy12010002 - 21 Dec 2021
Cited by 62 | Viewed by 27183
Abstract
Vertical farming is on its way to becoming an addition to conventional agricultural practices, improving sustainable food production for the growing world population under increasing climate stress. While the early development of vertical farming systems mainly focused on technological advancement through design innovation, [...] Read more.
Vertical farming is on its way to becoming an addition to conventional agricultural practices, improving sustainable food production for the growing world population under increasing climate stress. While the early development of vertical farming systems mainly focused on technological advancement through design innovation, the automation of hydroponic cultivation, and advanced LED lighting systems, more recent studies focus on the resilience and circularity of vertical farming. These sustainability objectives are addressed by investigating water quality and microbial life in a hydroponic cultivation context. Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) have been shown to improve plant performance and resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses. The application of PGPRs to plant-growing media increases microbial functional diversity, creating opportunities to improve the circularity and resilience of vertical farming systems by reducing our dependency on chemical fertilizers and crop protection products. Here, we give a brief historical overview of vertical farming, review its opportunities and challenges in an economic, environmental, social, and political context, and discuss advances in exploiting the rhizosphere microbiome in hydroponic cultivation systems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Technologies to Enable a Sustainable Vertical Farming Industry)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-4
Back to TopTop