An important factor affecting the profitability of vertical farming is a grower’s ability to consistently deliver a predictable product. To achieve this, growers must create an environment that supplies all the crop’s needs over its entire growth cycle by identifying and co-optimizing environmental variables such as CO2, light, humidity, airflow and other parameters. This presentation will focus on real time sensing, monitoring, and climate control strategies with system designs for environmental uniformity leading to enhanced resource use efficiency in CEA system.
Murat Kacira is director of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center and he is a professor in the Biosystems Engineering Department at the University of Arizona. He received his B.S. degree in Agricultural Engineering in Cukurova University in Turkey and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering from The Ohio State University in USA. His research involves automation, environmental control, alternative energy integrated CEA systems and resource use optimization in controlled environment agriculture systems including greenhouses and vertical farming-based plant factories with artificial lighting. He is a member of American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE), American Society of Horticultural Sciences (ASHS), and International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS). He serves as Chair of the Division Precision Horticulture Engineering under ISHS.
