Estimate of the LAI to Calculate the CO2 Consumption of Lettuce Leaf

Abstract

Currently, human life and ecosystems are being threatened by rising temperatures, rising sea levels, seasonal variations, etc. due to global warming and abnormal weather phenomena. Accordingly, studies have been actively performed on plant factories and large greenhouses to enable us to grow crops without coming into contact with global weathers and climates. The recent improvement of facility cultivation technologies has enabled us to adjust not only temperature, humidity, and light environments but also CO2 concentration (Sun et al., 2001). Of those factors, CO2 is important in the growth of plants (Nederhoff et al., 1994). It appears that improving CO2 literacy will be possible by determining the limiting factors in photosynthesis under constant environmental conditions and improving these factors through biotechnology approaches. This study attempts to measure CO2 consumption of lettuce according to the leaf area under CO2 consumption of lettuce and thereby to investigate the relationship between leaf area and CO2 consumption for the purpose of estimating CO2 consumption per leaf area of lettuce cultivated from plant factories or large greenhouses. Additionally, based on the results from this study, we will measure the amount of CO2 consumption in plant factories and large green houses, to estimate the vegetation areas of plants. For the configuration of experimental apparatuses, a dualfully enclosed chamber (1,000 x 1,000 x 1,550 mm) was manufactured to measure CO2 concentration. As an experimental tool, a planimeter was used to measure the leaf area of lettuce. In our experiments, CO2 consumption of lettuce according to leaf area under artificial light sources was measured and thereby we tried to identify the relationship between leaf area and CO2 consumption. After the experiment, the leaf area of lettuce was measured, the relationship between the leaf area and CO2 consumption was identified. It was found that CO2 consumption according to leaf area and unit leaf area differs.