The Institute of Plant Production at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (Pisa, Italy) has recently inaugurated a technology container to promote research and development in the field of vertical farming and indoor cultivation, with the aim of studying the response of horticultural crops to changes in their environment and cultivation conditions.

The container for the indoor cultivation of plants

This was made possible by the collaboration between C-Led and Greatit, who provided their innovative equipment as part of the Agritech project. A state-of-the-art facility has been created to enable researchers to carry out indoor experiments on plant growth in a regulated atmosphere.

Raffaello Montanari of C-Led

"In fact, thanks to a complete and total control system, it is possible to manage and regulate all the environmental parameters inside the Demetra container", explain Raffaello Montanari from C-Led and Daniele Bertocchi from Greatit. "From the installation of professional LED lighting, where both the spectrum of light and its intensity can be adjusted, to the climate, where the temperature can be varied from +5°C to +45°C, to the humidity control from 60 to 90%, to the fertigation system, which allows the distribution of fertiliser with the irrigation water and the application of different solutions at the same time."

Daniele Bertocchi Greatit

The C-LED lamps installed in this customised container allow maximum flexibility in controlling the light administered to the plants: thanks to the control and regulation of each individual channel (red 660 nm, blue 450 nm, white 4000K and red far 730 nm), it is possible to modify the amount of light available to the plants at any time, allowing researchers to create and test any possible shade by varying the percentage of wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum.
In addition, once the appropriate spectrum has been defined for the species to be grown, it is also possible to adjust the level of light intensity, expressed in PPFD (photosynthetic photon flux density expressed in μmol m-2 s-1), and the photoperiod, i.e. the number of hours of light per day, a very important factor for plant physiology.

A moment during the inaugural ceremony of the vertical farm container

The Demetra 2 isothermal container is a refurbished container used as a vertical farm. It has been completely customised by Greatit srl, an Italian company working in the field of sustainable and km0 agriculture. The structure consists of a chamber for experimenting with different types of plants, with an internal volume of 25.13 cubic metres, and is equipped with all the instruments necessary for growing plants in a monitored atmosphere. A cell control unit allows the variation of the temperature, the control of the humidity and the activation of the anti-stratification device, sucking the air in the top zone and diffusing the air in the bottom zone, creating a uniform thermo-hygrometric environment throughout the cell, without the air currents coming into direct contact with the product receiving treatment. A fertigation system can also be used to distribute fertilisers through the irrigation water and apply different treatments simultaneously.

All these features make the climate chamber particularly suitable for scientific experiments. The chamber is equipped with racks of a different size to those normally used in the trade for vegetables such as microgreens and baby leaves (young seedlings and growing leaves of leafy vegetables), suitable for growing various medium-sized species, as well as sensors to assess the quality of the light, an internal camera and software to manage the settings remotely via smartphone and tablet.

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