Impact of greenhouse climate on performance of strawberry cultivated in soilless media under time-differential supplemental lighting

Abstract

Strawberry production is significantly affected by the climatic conditions (mainly light, temperature, and humidity). Thus, management of climate is of utmost importance for improving the plant growth, yield, and quality of strawberries. Keeping this in view, a study was undertaken to study the impact of greenhouse climate on performance of strawberry cultivated in soilless media under time-differential supplemental lighting. This research included three levels of supplemental lighting (I) viz. 235 (I₁), 169 (I₂), 132 μ mol m⁻² s⁻¹ (I₃), and 3 levels of photoperiod (P) viz. 12 (P₁), 14 (P₂), and 16 h (P₃) replicated thrice in a factorial completely randomized design (CRD) layout. The supplemental lighting of 132 μ mol m⁻²s⁻¹ and photoperiod of 16 h resulted in highest fruit yield of 450.0 g/plant with an average value of 408.9 g/plant. The results indicated a significant increase in yield, water use efficiency (WUE) and fertilizer use efficiency (FUE) of camarosa strawberry with decrease in supplemental lighting from 235 to 132 μ mol m⁻²s⁻¹ and increase in photoperiod from 12 to 16 h. Thus, subjecting the camarosa strawberry plants to light in the range of 362.5–430.6 μ mol m⁻²s⁻¹ (including supplemental light of 132 μ mol m⁻²s⁻¹) for about 16 h, keeping the temperature and humidity in the range of 19.5–25.0 °C and 65.0–75.0%, respectively, is desired to record the improved plant growth and quality fruit production, when cultivated in soilless media inside a greenhouse.

Keywords:

• Camarosa
• full spectrum LED grow lights
• microclimate
• soilless
• strawberry

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the financial support from the funding agency Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi for carrying out this research.

Ethical approval

Not applicable.

Consent to participate

Participants provided consent before participating in the study.

Code availability

Not applicable

Authors’ contributions

PK implemented the experiment in greenhouse, installed lighting system, developed the low-cost climate monitoring system, recorded data and carried out analysis part. MCS planned the study, assisted in implementing this research and written the manuscript. RS edited the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article.

Data availability statement

The data generated and analyzed during this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the funding agency Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi for carrying out this research.