Impact of Light on Horticultural Crops—2nd Edition

A special issue of Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472). This special issue belongs to the section "Crop Production".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 September 2024) | Viewed by 2825

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Horticulture, Aristotle University, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Interests: cultivation techniques for vegetable production; quality of vegetable products; hydroponic vegetable production; postharvest physiology of vegetables; role of light on vegetables’ growth; quality of seedlings; quality and seed germination; vegetable grafting; innovative forms of vegetable products; organic cultivation of vegetables
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Guest Editor
Department of Agriculture, University of Patras, 30200 Messolonghi, Greece
Interests: horticulture; plant photobiology; controlled environment agriculture; plant physiology; vegetable grafting
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Light is an essential factor for the growth and quality of horticultural plants, and its effects depend upon parameters such as duration, intensity and quality. It is an energy source for photosynthesis as well as a signal triggering plant photomorphogenesis and physiological, biochemical and molecular responses. However, solar light strongly differs between winter and summer conditions, with excess light in open field cultivations imposing severe stress on plants, especially during summer months, while supplementary light sources are implemented in greenhouse crop production to complement natural light when it is insufficient. On the other hand, artificial lighting is used as the sole lighting source in plant factories and nurseries (i.e., healing chambers, plant tissue culture). In order to enhance sustainability and profitability, light must be studied and efficiently applied within horticultural crop production. Novel technologies such as light-emitting diodes, new transparent greenhouse covering materials, photoselective nettings, growth chambers and plant factories showcase the critical role of light interacting with plants from the level of seed germination to growth rate, product quality and postharvest storage.

This Special Issue focuses on recent findings in horticultural crops with regard to light characteristics (i.e., quality, quantity, etc.) presented as research papers, short communications and review articles.

Dr. Athanasios Koukounaras
Dr. Filippos Bantis
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • light quantity and quality
  • light-emitting diodes (LEDs)
  • plant factory with artificial lighting (PFAL)
  • physiology
  • photomorphogenesis
  • photosynthesis
  • plant growth and quality
  • postharvest storage
  • climate change
  • shade net house

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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13 pages, 1317 KiB  
Article
Light Intensity Effects on Productivity and Post-Harvest Quality in Perilla frutescens Cultivated in CEA
by Akvilė Viršilė, Ieva Gudžinskaitė, Kristina Laužikė, Gediminas Kudirka, Audrius Pukalskas and Giedrė Samuolienė
Agriculture 2024, 14(11), 2079; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture14112079 - 19 Nov 2024
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Abstract
Leafy vegetables, mainly lettuces, are currently the main crop cultivated in controlled environment agriculture (CEA), including vertical farming and plant factories. There is a rising demand to expand this portfolio with a wider variety of underutilized edible plants containing various bioactive compounds and [...] Read more.
Leafy vegetables, mainly lettuces, are currently the main crop cultivated in controlled environment agriculture (CEA), including vertical farming and plant factories. There is a rising demand to expand this portfolio with a wider variety of underutilized edible plants containing various bioactive compounds and sensory properties seeking to enrich human diets. However, the optimal cultivation conditions for these underutilized plants significantly differ from those optimized for lettuce, basil, and other popular CEA crops. Therefore, this study aims to explore the impacts of light-emitting diode (LED) lighting intensity (photosynthetic photon flux density, PPFD) on green leaf Perilla frutescens cultivated in CEA. Plants were grown under four levels of LED lighting PPFDs from 150 to 300 µmol m−2s−1 for 4 weeks. Plant biomass productivity, soluble sugar contents, antioxidant properties (DPPH, ABTS free radical scavenging activities, FRAP antioxidant power), and total contents of phenolic compounds in leaves were evaluated at harvesting time. Further, harvested plant material was stored in the dark, at +6 °C, and the water content, water loss and transpiration rate, leaf sugar contents, and antioxidant properties were monitored 1, 3, and 5 days after harvesting. The summarized data suggest that higher cultivation lighting PPFD results in better harvest quality preservation during post-harvest storage. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Impact of Light on Horticultural Crops—2nd Edition)
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Review

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13 pages, 958 KiB  
Review
Vegetable Production in PFALs: Control of Micro-Environmental Factors, Principal Components and Automated Systems
by Filippos Bantis, Ioanna Chatzigeorgiou, Michail Sismanis, Georgios K. Ntinas and Athanasios Koukounaras
Agriculture 2024, 14(4), 642; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture14040642 - 22 Apr 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1578
Abstract
Plant factories with artificial lighting (PFALs) are indoor crop production systems aiming at the growth of high-value products in terms of yield and quality, while maximizing resource use efficiency. The emergence of PFALs opened a new world for crop production and offered an [...] Read more.
Plant factories with artificial lighting (PFALs) are indoor crop production systems aiming at the growth of high-value products in terms of yield and quality, while maximizing resource use efficiency. The emergence of PFALs opened a new world for crop production and offered an option to tackle problems related to climate change, land availability, and urban/peri-urban farming. This was made possible upon major technological advancements and extensive research in the field of controlled environment agriculture, which paved the way for the establishment of such cost-efficient and climate-unaffected modules of vegetable and other crops’ production. In the present review, we have examined the recent research achievements regarding the micro-environmental factors, the principal components, as well as the automated systems used for plant production in PFALs. Ultimately, we provide the reader with a number of future perspectives that can be considered for indoors cultivation in the following years. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Impact of Light on Horticultural Crops—2nd Edition)
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