Spectral investigation for efficient photosynthesis in controlled environment agriculture (CEA)

为所有加拿大人提供健康食品是我们农业的主要任务，农业是我们经济的重要支柱之一。由于地理位置的原因，对加拿大大部分地区来说，维持一年四季的户外耕作是具有挑战性的。在大西洋加拿大，漫长的冬季严重限制了农业的发展，使得冬季无法在户外种植蔬菜，在恶劣的天气条件下很容易运输食物。温室农业和室内农业等新方法在创造效率、实现规模和最大化利润方面变得越来越重要。然而，生产成本是温室粮食作物生产中的主要问题。由于光电子技术的突破，随着坚固、强大、低成本的发光二极管(LED)的出现，LED照明在温室蔬菜生产中的使用已成为加拿大园艺业中一个日益增长的部门。市场上有多种LED照明光源，然而，选择最佳的LED照明仍然具有挑战性，但对于实现植物生长的高效率和将生产成本降至最低至关重要。通过在纪念大学的光子学小组和CEPG咨询设计公司(一家初创公司)之间建立合作，设计用于种植食品和治疗产品的受控环境植物生长(CEPG)系统的业务，获得加拿大卫生部的许可和批准。NSERC Engage Grant项目对一些市面上可用的LED照明系统进行了光谱测量和分析，并确定了适合罗勒和油菜(又名萝卜绿)这两种特定植物的“室内”、“100%人工照明”和“生长空间”生长的LED灯。该项目将帮助产业合作伙伴揭示这两种蔬菜的植物作用光谱，发现LED的发射光谱，并确定这两种蔬菜的最佳LED照明系统。通过这项研究获得的知识将加深我们对LED照明光合作用的理解，这将在节能、环保和食品工业中具有潜在的应用，从而有利于加拿大在这些领域的产业。

Providing healthy foods to all Canadians is the main task of our agriculture, which is one of the crucial pillars for our economy. Due to the geographic location, maintaining a year-round outdoor farming is challenging for most parts of Canada. In Atlantic Canada, the agriculture is seriously restricted by long winter, which makes it impossible to grow vegetables outdoor during the winter and vulnerable for the transportation of foods under harsh weather conditions. New approaches, such as greenhouse farming and indoor agriculture, have become increasingly important to create efficiency, achieve scale and maximize profitability. However, production cost is the major concern in the greenhouse food crops production. Owing to the breakthroughs in the photonics technologies with the availability of robust, powerful, low-cost light-emitting diodes (LEDs), the use of LED lighting for greenhouse vegetable production has become a growing sector in Canadian horticulture. Various LED lighting sources are available on the market, however, selection of optimal LED lighting remains challenging, yet crucial for achieving high efficiency in plant growth and minimizing the cost of production. By establishing collaboration between the photonics group at Memorial University and CEPG Consulting and Design Inc., a start-up company, in the business of designing controlled environment plant growth (CEPG) systems used in cultivation of foods and therapeutics products, licensed and approved by Health Canada. This NSERC Engage Grant project investigates spectral measurement and analysis on some commercially available LED lighting systems and identify suitable LED lights for the "Indoor", "100% artificially lit" "Grow-room" growth of two specific plants, i.e., Basil and Rape (aka turnip greens). This project will help the industrial partner reveal plant action spectra of these two species, discover emission spectra of LEDs, and identify the optimal LED lighting system for these two vegetables. The knowledge acquired from this study will enhance our understanding of the photosynthesis with LED lighting, which will have potential applications in energy conservation, environmental protection, and food industry, thus benefit Canadian industries in these fields.