Hydroponic lettuce in-situ water circulation evaluation via nondestructive mass measurement in controlled environment

Front Plant Sci. 2024 Oct 16:15:1385191. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1385191. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

This study proposed a hydroponic system with the capacity to acquire high-resolution in situ mass data for non-destructive evaluation of water circulation in lettuce. The system customizes the watering profile, enables high-frequency in situ weight measurement, and monitors multidimensional environment changes. Key air, water, and light parameters were collected to evaluate the plant response, susceptibility, and adaptability to environmental conditions. Multiple physiological indices were defined to characterize the properties of two lettuce varieties in response to different environmental factors.

Keywords: IoT; environmental susceptibility; hydroponic lettuce; in situ; non-destructive evaluation; operation optimization; transpiration; water circulation.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was partially supported by NSF and USDA (#1830478, #1842097, and #2021-67021-35329) and by the Plant Sciences Institute at Iowa State University.