Fluorescent Lighting Distribution for Plant Micropropagation

The cloning of plants can be produced in culture vessels by a micropropagation technique. It is popular to produce genetically uniform plantlets for the plant production industry to enhance profitability. Many culture vessels were placed on the shelves and many sets of successive horizontal shelves were arranged in the culture room. The fluorescent tubes installed above the vessels provided the light source for the culture vessels. The distribution uniformity of the lighting systems was very important for maintaining the quantity of plantlets. The model of lighting distribution for plant micropropagation was developed in this study. The photon flux density at different locations under various mounting heights and positions for the luminaries were measured at a full scale of the micropropagation shelf. The fitting agreements of three models were evaluated, including the line model, ribbon model, and empirical regression models. The ribbon model had the best fitting ability. The effect of height and spacing of fluorescent tubes on the distribution uniformity of light photon flux density was evaluated by the sensitivity analysis.