Design and implementation of an experimental cultivation chamber with LED lights and preliminary tests with lettuce (Lactuca Sativa L.)

Various statistics indicate that as the concentration of the population in urban areas grows, the demand for more and better food in these urban or suburban places increases proportionally. For this reason, new and innovative cultivation systems are being used worldwide, whose main characteristics are: soilless farms, protected and controlled environments, CO2 supply, nutrient solution, artificial lights, temperature, humidity and air movement control, and which are known as “Vertical Agriculture”, Urban Agriculture or “Plant Factory with Artificial Lights”. Panama does not have laboratories to generate knowledge with these new production models, so the main objective of this research was to build and test a plant factory-type infrastructure with artificial light in the facilities of the Agroindustrial Production and Research Center. Among the specific objectives, it was planned to carry out accumulated germination and growth tests on romaine lettuce and subject the seedlings to LED lights using a prototype lamp built at CEPIA and commercial lights. The study met the objective of building and testing the laboratory in an area of 45 m2. It was also possible to establish the percentage of accumulated germination of lettuce, the fresh weight of the plants, number of leaves and the approximate time of the crop cycle. In addition, it was possible to successfully test the lamp prototype built at CEPIA, which had three LED light spectra, for the growth of romaine lettuce.