Application of plant factory with artificial lighting in horticultural production: current progress and future trends

Horticultural production, enriched in essential nutrients such as proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and lipids, face challenges due to rapid global population growth, resource shortages, environmental degradation, and a decline in the number of horticultural practitioners. These challenges prevent their yield and quality from meeting sustainability requirements. By regulating temperature, humidity, light, and nutrient supply, plant factories with artificial lighting (PFALs) enable stable crop cultivation, facilitate year-round production, and promote efficient resource use, yielding high-quality horticultural products with significant application potential. However, issues such as high initial investment and electricity costs remain unresolved. Primarily, PFALs are utilized in the production of green leafy vegetables, transplants, and medicinal plants. In PFALs, lettuce yield can increase by over 50% under optimal lighting conditions compared to traditional methods. PFALs are also employed in the commercial production of horticultural seedlings, technical research on shortening growth cycle and mechanism research on environmental regulation of metabolites. This supports rapid breeding and the production of high-value horticultural products. Additionally, this paper addresses the challenges faced by plant factories in horticultural production and explores prospects and considerations for PFAL applications in this domain.