Design and Validation of a Low Cost Programmable Controlled Environment for Study and Production of Plants, Mushroom, and Insect Larvae

Abstract

Use of commercial growth chambers for study of biological processes involved in biomass growth and production pose certain limitations on the nature of studies that can be performed in them. Optimization of biomass rearing and production process requires quantitative study of environment influences on the organism and eventually the products and byproducts consumed and produced. This work presents a low cost modular system designed to facilitate quantitative study of growth processes and resource exchanges in organisms such as plants, fungi and insect larvae. The proposed system constitutes of modular units each performing a specific function. A novel compact thermoelectric cooler based unit is designed for conditioning the air. Sensor cluster for measuring gas concentrations, air properties (temperature, humidity, pressure), and growing medium properties is implemented and tested. An actuator cluster for resource exchange and a wiring and control scheme for light spectrum adjustment is proposed. A three tier hierarchical software framework consisting of an open-source cloud platform for data aggregation and user interaction, embedded firmware for microcontroller, and an application development framework for test automation and experiment regime design is developed and presented. A series of experiments and tests were performed using the designed hardware and software to evaluate its capabilities and limitations. This controlled environment was used to study the photosynthesis and its dependency on temperature and light intensity in Ocimum basilicum. In a second experiment, evolution of metabolic activity of Hermetia illucens larvae over its larval phase was studied and the metabolic products and byproducts were quantitatively measured.

A comprehensive dynamic growth and development model of Hermetia illucens larvae

“…The studies on the production of larvae in an artificial controlled environment in this work are conducted in a custom built production unit [ 21 ] that can provide the necessary growing conditions and simultaneously perform measurements of various parameters (e.g. air and substrate temperature, CO 2 and O 2 concentrations, humidity).…”

“…Similarly, information related to the states outside the production unit, e.g., temperature, humidity and CO 2 concentration of external air source, are logged using data loggers. Further details regarding the production environment can be found in [ 21 ] (see Section 2.1.4 and 3.7).…”

DYNAMISM: A Low-Cost Automatic System for Measurements of Gas Exchange at Canopy Scale in Dynamic Conditions

“…The system is flexible and allows to mimic different light conditions, either static or dynamic, as well as different CO2 concentration levels if connected to a proper CO2 source allowing a good characterization of canopy photosynthesis comparable to field data. To our knowledge, few other growth chamber systems have this ability to mimic natural environmental conditions and have been described 6 systematically including prices of the components, allowing a user-friendly reproduction of the system (Padmanabha and Streif, 2019). Air temperature inside each chamber is measured using a thermistor (Measurement Specialties, Inc., model 10K3A1 Series 1) placed above the LEDs, while inlet air pressure is measured at the inlet of the main pipeline using an integrated pressure sensor (Freescale Semiconductor, Inc., model MPX4115A).…”

Contribución al desarrollo de sistemas inteligentes de monitorización y control de microclimas lumínicos basados en el Internet de las cosas y en las nuevas tecnologías SSL (Solid State Lighting). Aplicación a entornos agrícolas para el estudio del efecto sobre la germinación y crecimiento vegetal “in vitro

“…Los cultivos producidos por el sistema VEGGIE se emplearon como alimento suplementario para la tripulación de la EEI. Una producción de lechuga completó su ciclo de crecimiento en 28 días y se comprobó que la carga microbiana del producto estaba dentro de los estándares establecidos por la NASA (Stutte et al, 2011 Morrow et al, 1993Morrow et al, 1994Bula et al, 1994Duffie et al, 1994Duffie et al, 1995 En 2019, el grupo de investigación de sistemas dinámicos y de control automático de la Universidad Técnica de Chemnitz en Alemania (Padmanabha et al, 2019) realizó una cámara de crecimiento de bajo coste para la producción combinada de plantas y larvas. Los autores determinaron que la combinación de ambas podría ser rentable para la construcción de granjas verticales por su comportamiento simbiótico entre ellos (por ejemplo, entre plantas y peces).…”

“…Tales investigaciones suponen un avance en la exploración espacial y el diseño bioregenerativo de sistemas de soporte vital. Por su parte, el Centro Aeroespacial Alemán (DLR) ha demostrado que al combinar la producción de diferentes organismos se reduce el costo total de las granjas verticales (Padmanabha et al, 2019).…”