Skyfarming – Staple Food Production in Cities – Light vs Energy Demand
- Publikations-Art
- Kongressbeitrag
- Autoren
- Schmierer, M., Brueck, H., Asch, F.
- Erscheinungsjahr
- 2012
- Veröffentlicht in
- Resilience of agricultural systems against crises
- Herausgeber
- Tielkes, E.
- Verlag
- DITSL GmbH , Witzenhausen
- Seite (von - bis)
- 217
- Tagungsname
- Tropentag 2012
- Tagungsort
- Göttingen / Kassel
Multi-level indoor plant production systems, also referred to as vertical farming orskyfarming systems are drawing more and more attention. In the context of climatechange and population increase accompanied by greater risks of global food shortage,such systems could secure food production particularly in mega cities and take pres-sure off arable land. Additionally, such systems minimise water and nutrient use ifbuild as closed circulation systemse.g.with biogas production from crop residues andits use for thermal regulation. However, even though plenty of design studies for verti-cal farming concepts exist, the total energy demand for plant growth and the potentialoutput in terms of yield biomass in such systems is largely unknown. Supplying lightto the plants assumedly having the greatest share of the total energy requirements forsuch a facility, we calculated the efficiency of high end light emitting diodes (LEDs)of different colours in terms of emitted quantum per electrical watt and linked theresults with a parametric model for the quantum demand of rice. The results showedthat there are several potential ways to meet the theoretical energy demand for lightsupply in an artificial environment, depending to a large extend on the plant’s physio-logical responses to illumination duration and light quality. In order to further developthe model, we designed and constructed a semi-closed chamber system allowing con-trol of temperature, vapour pressure deficit, light intensity and quality (ratio of blue,green and red wavelengths) and the measurement of canopy gas exchange parame-ters. Those experimental data will also help optimising the basic light managementin a closed plant production system such as reflection rate from surfaces and rate ofdirect versus diffuse light. Preliminary results of growth experiments will be shownand possibilities for increasing the radiation use efficiency in closed plant productionsystems will be discussed.