Editor:  Dr. Sasan Aliniaeifard 

Photosynthesis and light responses lab
Department of Horticulture
College of Aburaihan
University of Tehran
PC. 3391653775
Pakdasht, Tehran, Iran
Tel/Fax: +98 21 36041089
Link: https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/record/2301006

https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=55840816000

Email: aliniaeifard@ut.ac.ir

Information about the special issue

Nowadays there is a high tendency to produce the crops in controlled environments in order to produce higher yield, healthier products and efficient use of resources and many other advantages than the traditional cultivations. Challenges and optimization of artificial light application is emerged as a hot topic for the research in horticulture. Issues related to light utilization in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) attracted so much attention of both research and industrial communities. In indoor horticulture (vertical farming or plant factories) due to absence of natural sunlight, artificial light exclusively drives plant growth and productivity. In greenhouses, due to shortage of light in autumn and winter seasons, utilization of supplemental light improves yield and quality of horticultural crops. In those cases, assimilation light is frequently employed to control both the photoperiod and light intensity and more recently the quality of light is highly addressed. Several artificial light sources are commercially available, including the recently-introduced light emitting diodes (LEDs). The LEDs have several advantages, leading to a burst in their importance and market share in the recent years. The large scale application of artificial lighting is currently limited by the little knowledge on cost-effective application of proper lighting recipe for plant growth and productivity. Furthermore, in protected cultivation of outdoor crops, controlling or changing the intensity and quality of light received by the crop canopy is an important issue in order to keep higher yield and good product.

In this special issue, research, perspectives, short communication, reviews, modeling, and methodological papers that targeted the impact of light (natural or artificial lighting) on horticultural crop production and quality are most welcome.