Dataset Information

Light quality characterization under climate screens and shade nets for controlled-environment agriculture.

ABSTRACT: Climate screens are typically used inside glass greenhouses to improve control of humidity and temperature, and thus reduce energy expenditure. Shade nets are more appropriate to use, either with or without polyethylene cladding, at locations less-reliant on climate control, but where protection against hail, wind and excessive solar radiation might be needed. In addition, insect screens and nets can be employed to hinder insect pests and other invertebrates entering either type of production environment, and to keep invertebrates used in pest management contained inside. Screens and nets both transmit sunlight in a wavelength-specific manner, giving them the potential to affect plant morphology and physiology. Screens and nets of various colours and nominal shading factors have been described and studied; however, detailed measurements of their spectral characteristics are scarce. We measured solar spectral photon-irradiance and its attenuation by climate screens, shade nets, insect nets, greenhouse glass, and polyethylene covers. Our aim was to elucidate the effects of different patterns, colours, and shading factors, on light quality in production environments. Our measurements reveal that there are large differences both in the fraction of global irradiance attenuated and spectral ratios received under materials that are otherwise superficially similar in terms of their appearance and texture. We suggest that the type of spectral characterization that we performed is required to fully interpret the results of research examining plant responses to different types of screen and net. These data on spectral irradiance would benefit material manufacturers, researchers, growers, and horticultural consultants, enabling material selection to better match the solutions sought by growers and their desired outcomes regarding plant performance.

SUBMITTER: Kotilainen T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6016941 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:Modern controlled environment facilities (CEFs) enable the simulation of dynamic microclimates in controlled ecological experiments through their technical ability to precisely control multiple environmental parameters. However, few CEF studies exploit the technical possibilities of their facilities, as climate change treatments are frequently applied by static manipulation of an inadequate number of climate change drivers, ignoring intra-annual variability and covariation of multiple meteorological variables. We present a method for generating regionalized climate series in high temporal resolution that was developed to force the TUMmesa Model EcoSystem Analyzer with dynamic climate simulations. The climate series represent annual cycles for a reference period (1987-2016) and the climate change scenarios RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 (2071-2100) regionalized for a climate station situated in a forested region of the German Spessart mountains. Based on the EURO-CORDEX and ReKliEs-DE model ensembles, typical annual courses of daily resolved climatologies for the reference period and the RCP scenarios were calculated from multimodel means of temperature (ta), relative humidity (rh), global radiation (Rg), air pressure (P), and ground-level ozone and complemented by CO2. To account for intra-annual variation and the covariability of multiple climate variables, daily values were substituted by hourly resolved data resampled from the historical record. The resulting present climate Test Reference Year (TRY) well represented a possible annual cycle within the reference period, and expected shifts in future mean values (e.g., higher ta) were reproduced within the RCP TRYs. The TRYs were executed in eight climate chambers of the TUMmesa facility and-accounting for the technical boundaries of the facility-reproduced with high precision. Especially, as an alternative to CEF simulations that reproduce mere day/night cycles and static manipulations of climate change drivers, the method presented here proved well suited for simulating regionalized and highly dynamic annual cycles for ecological CEF studies.

Dataset Information

Light quality characterization under climate screens and shade nets for controlled-environment agriculture.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure