Hyein Lee, Seon Woo Park, Meiyan Cui, Byungkwan Lee, Duy Minh Pham, Hyunseung Hwang & Changhoo Chun
Abstract
The lighting source is one of the most critical environmental elements in a plant factory for plant production. In this study, the narrow spectrum of blue LEDs (B) was added to mint-white LEDs (MW), resulting in different spectral distributions of white lights. Strawberry propagules and runner plants were grown for 21 days under 100% MW, 80% MW and 20% B, 50% of each MW and B, or 100% B to identify the effects of additional blue to white LEDs on their growth. Additionally, the propagation periods for three runner plants were recorded to achieve greater efficiency with these lighting treatments. As a result, propagules and runner plants showed the greatest growth and development in the 80% MW and 20% B. The same lighting treatment had the shortest propagation cycles in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd runner plants, 13.2, 24.9, and 35.2 days, respectively, indicating that growth promotion reduces the propagation cycle. However, 100% B caused runner growth retardation on strawberry plant and this resulted the prolongation of propagation cycle. There was no significant difference in net photosynthetic rate for propagules, however, the runner plant was significantly lowest in 100% MW. The intercellular CO2 concentration and stomatal conductance to CO2 transfer of runner plants showed significant differences similar to net photosynthetic rate. These experimental results suggest that the optimal amount of blue light could promote strawberry plant growth and strawberry runner plants’ growth.
The lighting source is one of the most critical environmental elements in a plant factory for plant production. In this study, the narrow spectrum of blue LEDs (B) was added to mint-white LEDs (MW), resulting in different spectral distributions of white …
