Study Helps Urban Farmers Create 'Light Recipe' to Increase Crop Yield

Researchers have developed a new formula to allow urban farmers to design their own "light recipe" a combination of different colors of lighting that could help increase crop yields in vertical farms.

The study, conducted at Grow It York, an indoor urban community farm based in a shipping container at SPARK in the city, developed a mathematical model that could help inform urban farmers of how light varies in different areas of a confined space and how to use this information to design better lighting systems.

The team at the University of York and Vertically Urban (a U.K.-based horticultural lighting manufacturer), looked at how the plants in various parts of a contained farming facility might experience light. Plants near a wall, for example, could experience brighter light because light will bounce more in that area. They then investigated how these differences in light impacted crop growth of kale, radish and sunflower shoots. The study is published in Quantitative Plant Biology.

Fresh fruit and veg

Dr. Daphne Ezer, from the University of York's Department of Biology, said, "More than 6 billion people will be living in urban centers by 2050, and there is a growing need to ensure that individuals living in these areas have access to fresh fruits and vegetables, especially as climate change threatens crop yields.

"One potential solution is having indoor urban farms that house dense shelves full of crops, also known as vertical farms. The lights in vertical farms can be highly controlled, enabling farmers to precisely design farming conditions to maximize yields.