Can vegetables be grown without sunlight? Has the plant factory been ready for large-scale application?
The plant cultivation technology that replaces natural light with artificial light is a new story that the lighting industry has been trying to tell for a long time. Compared with traditional planting methods, artificial light can control the light duration at will, accelerate plant growth, and provide the possibility for indoor three-dimensional "plant factories" that are free from the constraints of the soil environment. In theory, it can completely solve the problem of scarce land resources.
However, due to cost and technical factors, the application of plant lighting is not yet widespread globally.
Recently, Guanghe New Plant Co., Ltd. in Shanghai released the "Ecological Environment Replicability Technology" and their latest product, the ecological box. They claimed that the large-scale application of plant lighting is about to become a reality.
From left to right: Zhang Jiqiang, founder of Guanghe New Plants; Zhao Yiding, executive director of China Energy Technology Think Tank; Tang Guoqing, vice president of the Chinese Lighting Society
Zhang Jiqiang, the founder of Guanghe New Plant and the chief designer of the project team, introduced to the Observer Network that this ecological box has numerous functions such as vegetable cultivation, mushroom cultivation, food fermentation, and pet applications. It is expected that the shipment volume will reach 1 million units within five years, with a market potential of up to several trillion yuan.
In addition, OptiGreen has also designed container-shaped ecological cabins and building-type ecological factories constructed from ecological units. These can utilize idle industrial buildings and urban high-rise structures to develop urban agriculture by applying the OptiGreen technology.
Zhao Yiding, the executive director of the China Energy Technology Think Tank, pointed out that the so-called "ecological workshop" is an equipment-based space for replicating ecological environments, and it is a new type of ecosystem that integrates agricultural production and energy production. It achieves efficient utilization of resources and friendly coexistence with the environment through the energy provided by nature. The "photosynthetic new plant" ecological workshop technology offers a fundamental solution to the problems of food and energy.
Photosynthetic new plant display ecological box product
The concept of plant lighting has existed for a long time. In recent years, it has also been applied to indoor plant cultivation in regions such as North America. Many domestic LED enterprises have made plans for it, viewing it as a new source of performance growth. However, in terms of the overall scale, the application of plant lighting is still relatively limited.
According to TrendForce's statistics, it is projected that the global market size of LED plant lighting will reach 1.44 billion US dollars in 2023 and 24.5 billion US dollars in 2027. The compound annual growth rate from 2022 to 2027 will be 12.8%.
Regarding the reason why traditional LED enterprises have been advancing slowly in the plant lighting market, Zhang Jiqiang believes that the requirements for light sources in plant lighting are significantly different from those in traditional lighting. In order to adjust the lighting parameters according to the needs of plants, some overseas enterprises have adopted the method of installing a large number of sensors, which results in high costs.
The new photovoltaic plant starts from the light source itself and has developed a dual-channel stepless control AC direct-drive LED control driving chip. It can achieve stepless adjustment of the light intensity and spectrum of the LED light source, thereby providing the most suitable lighting environment for plants.
Zhang Jiqiang said: "The successful development of this chip is the result of our long-term efforts in the agricultural technology field. It not only represents our profound understanding of agricultural lighting technology, but also showcases our technical strength in intelligent control. We believe that this chip will bring revolutionary changes to global agricultural lighting."
It is worth noting that several LED industry listed companies such as Sanan Optoelectronics, Mulinsen, and Infortec have all made investments in the field of plant lighting. Among them, Sanan Optoelectronics established Zhongke Sanan in 2015 in collaboration with the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to conduct research and development related to vertical agriculture. However, up to now, most of these listed companies have not separately disclosed the revenue of their plant lighting business in their financial reports.
Source: Observer
