How Do White LEDs’ Spectra Affect the Fresh Weight of Lettuce Grown

under Artificial Lighting in a Plant Factory?

Researchers:Bermudez Faith, Caranto Lara Nicole O., EquipadoShairah A.,

Demiar Mitch Faith, Sulaiman Bea B. , Christine Joy Castor

Rationale

Vegetable production in closed-system plant factories with artificial

lighting, also called vertical farming , has seen great progress since light-emitting

diodes (LEDs) were introduced in the 1980s to replace conventional light sources

such as fluorescent lamps (FLs). The use of LEDs in plant production has

followed the technological innovations in the LED industry. It was found by the

early 2000s that the use of monochromatic R-LEDs, supplemented by B-LEDs,

attained the plant productivity as high as under sunlight, and these

monochromatic narrow spectrum LEDs or red + blue LEDs (RB-LEDs) have

dominated in research in this field as well as in commercial plant factory

production. The LED industry had developed by the late-1990s high-efficiency

LEDs covering the entire visible spectrum from blue to red as well as the

phosphor technology to create white LEDs (W-LEDs) by converting a

monochromatic narrowband light from a LED chip to a broadband white light, and

the commercial supply of W-LEDs began in 2010. Since then, the use of W-LEDs

has rapidly spread to all spheres of human life to replace conventional lights.

Studies on the effects of W-LEDs on plant growth, which began in the early

2010s, have been sharply increasing in the last few years. Even if limited to

lettuce, on which this paper focuses, many studies have recently published, and

many of them have demonstrated that the effects of broad-spectrum W-LEDs on

lettuce growth are as good as, or even better than, those of narrow-spectrum R-

LED, B-LED, and RB-LED. However, the results of the studies varied greatly,

and some reported opposite results. Conflicting results were also reported

among whitish-LEDs, i.e., among RGB-LED, RW-LED and W-LED. Moreover,

plant-growth performance varied considerably among broad-spectrum W-LEDs.

The diversity of the results among these studies is very large. More studies are

urgently required to obtain comprehensive understanding about how W-LEDs

work on plant growth.The aim of this study is to explore how the performance of

whitish-LEDs affect the growth and the weight of the lettuce plant is compared

among them as well as with that of RB-LEDs which have been used as a major

light source in plant factories.

Research Problem

1. How do White LEDs’ spectra affect the fresh weight of lettuce grown under

artificial lighting in a plant factory?

2. What is the effect of using a white LEDs as an artificial lightning on the weight

of lettuce plant ?

Hypothesis

1. There is no effect in the weight of the lettuce plant grown under artificial

lightning of white LED.

2. There is no difference between a munggo plant grown in artificial light and

natural light
 Engineering Goals

To determine the design or construction of How Do White Leds’ Spectra

Affect The Fresh Weight Of Lettuce Grown Under Artificial Lighting In A Plant

Factory, for people who want to know if the artificial light can make the plant grow

and what will it affect on the weight of the plant, for the people or farmers who

want to grow a lettuce plant without using the sunlight.

Expected Outcomes

The outcomes that expected by the researchers is that the LED may affect

the weight of the lettuce grown under artificial lightning and make the plant

lighter than the plant grown in sunlight.

Procedure

a. The researchers will prepare the materials needed to grow the lettuce by

using white LED such as the seeds, the white LED, water, pot, soil.

b. The researchers will buy lettuce seeds, the seed must be soaked with tap

water and placed in the dark at 20˚C for 48 h for germination. The

dimension of one plant growing layer that should lighted by a LED that

should be 1050 cm × 120 cm × 30 cm (L × W × H).

c. The researchers will proceed on planting the lettuce and monitor it for 35

days

d. After finishing all the things ,the researchers need to find a testing center

for the plant to be examine whether the white LED affect the weight of the

lettuce plant.
Risk and Safety

The risk is that the white LED may not affect the weight of the lettuce plant

instead it will affect on something that the research do not subject, the safety is

that the white LED will affect the weight of the lettuce plant.

Data Analysis

The researchers will wait until the result comes from testing center and

they will analyze the data.

Bibliography

Na Lu1, Suthisak Saengtharatip2, Michiko Takagaki1,2*, Atsushi

Maruyama , Masao Kikuchi (2019) How Do White LEDs’ Spectra Affect the
2 1

Fresh Weight of Lettuce Grown under Artificial Lighting in a Plant

Factory?—A Statistical Approach
https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=93889