A detailed explanation of the past, present and future of the LED plant factory

Over the past decade, due to emergence of blue LED and the red and blue LED light source in combination successful development and application of artificial light energy plant factory control technology based on intelligent networks was significantly reduced, to further reduce the interlayer spacing cultivation, energy efficiency The ratio is greatly improved. At the same time, the application of sensors, intelligent controllers and IoT technology has also made it possible for plant factories to intelligently control.

We can see that during this period, many countries across the country have accelerated the pace of research and development and industrialization of plant factories. For example, since 2009, Japan has proposed vigorously developing plant factories and revitalizing modern agriculture programs. In the same year, the Korean government also began to support research institutions and companies to jointly develop artificial photoplant factories. On the one hand, the United States provides food security for space stations and planetary exploration through the research of plant factories. On the other hand, it proposes the concept of “skyscraper agriculture” and wants to break through the resource bottleneck from space...

Also in 2009, the R&D team of the Plant Research Institute of China Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Beijing Zhonghuan Yanda Facility Horticultural Technology Co., Ltd. developed the first intelligent plant factory in China. At present, the technical achievements have been extended to more than 20 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shandong.

In fact, China has started research and development of plant factories since the 1990s. In 2002, it successfully developed natural light plant factories. In 2005, it developed the LED plant factory experimental system, and exhibited the home LED plant factory for the first time at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. In 2013, the state officially listed the “Intelligent Plant Factory Production Technology Research” project in the “863” program, and currently has about 100 artificial light plant factories of different scales.

The growing momentum of plant factories has gradually attracted the attention of many people in the LED lighting industry. In addition, this year’s President Xi Jinping visited the national “12th Five-Year” Science and Technology Innovation Achievement Exhibition and independently developed intelligent LED plants for the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The factory has shown a certain degree of attention, especially for those who are interested in joining the industry, and they have added a lot of confidence to their future development.

In this article, Liu Wenke, a researcher, doctoral and doctoral supervisor of the Institute of Agricultural Environment and Sustainable Development of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, will explain the plant factory in many aspects, or help people to understand more about the development status of this field. With the prospects.

Definition

According to the Japanese scholar Gu Shi’s “Artificial Light Plant Factory” and the Chinese scholar Yang Qichang’s “Introduction to Plant Factory”, the plant factory definition is: the plant factory is a kind of high-precision environment control in the facility to realize the crop anniversary. The high-efficiency agricultural system that is continuously produced is the temperature, humidity, light, and CO of the crop growth process by the computer. The environmental factors such as concentration and nutrient solution are automatically controlled, and labor-saving production methods that are not subject to or are rarely restricted by natural conditions.

The plant factory makes full use of modern equipment engineering, biotechnology, facility horticulture technology, plant physiology, plant cultivation engineering and environmental control information technology. It is a highly technically intensive industry and has been recognized as the most advanced development of facility horticulture for many years. The stage is one of the important indicators to measure the level of high-tech development in a country's agriculture.

However, Dr. Liu Wenke said that the concept of plant factories originating from Japanese scholars has certain deficiencies, mainly because the definitions are too general and the boundary conditions are relatively vague. It does not involve the type of facilities, facility tightness and control factors and their precision. difference. This hinders people's unified understanding of plant factories and confuses the direction of system technology research and development and industrial application. Plant factories should have the basic attributes of a "factory." Closed plant production systems and automation are core indicators for measuring plant plant modernization and factory production potential.

From the perspective of definitional generality and authority, plant factory environmental control essentially includes three categories: water and fertilizer automation control, environmental factor automation control, and plant product production line automation platform.

The plant factory should be a streamlined plant production facility with a certain degree of automation. The automated assembly line is divided into three stages: prenatal (nurturing), mid-production (transplantation, cultivation and transportation), post-production (harvesting, packaging), with emphasis on the prenatal and mid-production phases.

The essential feature of plant factories is the automatic control of production factors, but the level of automation of plant factories is hierarchical, and the level of intelligent facilities is divided. The recommended definition of a plant factory should focus on the essential characteristics of automation control within its facility. Dr. Liu Wenke pointed out that the previous definition focused on the highest stage and ideal form of the plant factory, ignoring the various forms of plant plant development process, it is difficult to cover the transition patterns of all current plant factories, and it is recommended to make corrections.

To this end, he suggested that plant factories should refer to some or all of the production factors (environmental factors, water and fertilizer supply, etc.) directly related to plant growth and development, which can be automatically regulated and controlled, and have certain spatial automatic management functions of plant production processes. Plant scale production system with high efficiency and low or no external environment interference. Based on this definition, the facility model in the form of a solar greenhouse and a multi-storey building can be regarded as a plant factory as long as it has defined essential characteristics.

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