Indoor Farming of Vegetables and Herbs: Potential and Challenges Michael Henry Bohme
Humboldt University of Berlin
Abstract
The demand of vegetables in the world and so as well in South East Asia is growing up with the increasing number of inhabitants on earth. In particular leave vegetables and herbaceous crops are from increasing interest for the consumers. What is the best solutions to meet this increased demand? Advanced technologies for the year-round production of leafy vegetables and herbs are necessary under the conditions that we encounter more and more often - as unstable growth conditions, due to climate changes, poor soil quality, changing rainfall and inadequate hygienic conditions (for plants as for humans). Protected cultivation with glass, plastics or nets is a solution used in all countries in the world in order to minimise the influence of inappropriate climate conditions. In the 1960th were tested plant cultivation towers in order to increase the effectivity of leave vegetable production by cultivation in a tower greenhouse up to 34m for industrial plant cultivation (Ruthner, 1963). A copy of this greenhouse where built up in Berlin-Dahlem where is situated our University. The vegetable where cultivated on a frequently mowing vertical assembly line in a height of about 13m (Riethus and Bau, 1970). Nowadays, are using in indoor farming systems also the third dimension in order to improve the intensity of land use. At the moment there are many vegetable vertical production systems used in the world (Despommier, D., 2009- Darko et al., 2014- Kozai et al. 2020). The technology in these facilities is useful for whole year round vegetable crop production, but in most of them the technologies are still using handwork from the transplanting to the harvest. One aim of our research was to be independent of the changing light availability from sun shine as in a greenhouse. In the research done at my department was confirmed the knowledge regarding the importance of light intensity, but our focus was mainly to investigate the different light spectra regarding the plant growth and
Keywords: Vertical crop cultivation, Light intensity, Light spectra, Aeroponic system
