Rerouting Artificial Light for Efficient Crops Production: A Review of Lighting Strategy in PFALs

Abstract

A plant factory with artificial light (PFAL) is defined as an advanced agricultural production system with a precisely controlled environment, playing an important role in vertical farming and urban food supply. Artificial light is one of the core technologies in PFALs and accounts for a large part of energy consumption; elevating the light utilization efficiency of plants is vital for the sustainable development of PFALs. Meanwhile, the enclosed structure of the plant factory resulted in the independence of its light environment, indicating that the light environment in PFALs can be custom-made. Lighting strategy is an attempt to reprogram the light environmental parameters in unconventional ways, resulting in innovative lighting modes for energy-saving, high-yield, and high-quality production in PFALs. This article reviewed the recent endeavors aiming to increase light conversion efficiency and nutritive properties of crops by different lighting strategies, providing economic irradiation patterns or modes for various PFALs production goals.