LED lights replace sunlight to efficiently cultivate crops in the plant factory of Changchun Agricultural Expo Park

In the plant factory of Changchun Agricultural Expo Park, plants do not grow through natural sunlight and natural soil, but through computers and cultivation equipment, which can achieve rapid breeding and develop more results in a limited time.

The plant factory achieves year-round continuous production of crops through high-precision environmental control within the facility. It uses computers, electronic sensing systems, and agricultural facilities to automatically control environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, light, and nutrient solution for plant growth, so that plant growth in the facility is not or rarely restricted by natural conditions.

Zhou Wei, the person in charge of the plant factory, said that the plant factory can adjust the light source from LED according to the needs of the plants. The smart LED light source installed in the factory can simulate the solar spectrum to meet the light needs of plants and become a "little sun" for plant growth.

According to reports, this kind of lamp has lamp tubes of different colors, providing light sources with different growth ratios for different plants. The factory can accurately control the light environment elements according to different plant growth stages, which is equivalent to the exclusive "light recipe" of the plants.

In addition, the cultivation mode of the plant factory does not require soil. Vegetables are grown in specialized cultivation modules. The bottom of the module relies on nutrient solution to provide plants with various nutrients in a timely and effective manner, maximizing the nutritional needs of plants in different growth periods.

When vegetables are grown in a plant factory, the general growth period will be shortened by more than half, which greatly saves the time and cost of breeding work. After passing the test, the taste and quality are no different from those under normal circumstances. But because of the clean air and environment, the vegetables here can be guaranteed to be green and pollution-free.

Zhou Wei said that plant factories are not restricted by geography and space and can be built near experimental buildings or breeding units. The number of cultivation layers can even reach more than 10, maximizing the use of space and saving breeding time and costs.

According to Zhou Wei, in 2004, China Agricultural University developed an artificial light-type closed plant factory using embedded network-based environmental control. In September 2009, the country's first plant factory with intelligent control as its core was successfully developed and put into operation at the Changchun Agricultural Expo Park. It became one of the few countries in the world that mastered the core technology of "plant factory" at that time.