Urban Ag News proud to feature Dr. Chieri Kubota’s class on Greenhouse Plant Physiology and Technology. Dr. Kubota was a professor at the University of Arizona and has moved to The Ohio State University this summer.
Week 6-2: Canopy environment 2
This week, your “system” of interest expands from a single leaf to a whole plant canopy (community). Canopy refers to ‘community’ of plants and in greenhouse crop production system, it often consists of plants of relatively same physiological age. This week’s lectures overview plant canopies and their microclimates. The first key content is to understand how light transmits inside the canopy and what is the resulting light intensity received by lower leaves. Then you will understand other micro climate factor (CO2 and temperature) and their spatial distributions inside the canopy. Understanding canopy and micro climate is so important as the crop’s performance is the integration of the productivity of different parts of canopy. The last part of the second lecture introduces some of the recent research on supplemental lighting to improve the canopy light environment, which may be interesting for those who are interested in learning modern application of CEA technology in food crop production and technologies tested in European countries.