Plant factories in the water-food-energy Nexus era: a systematic bibliographical review

In recent years, several global issues related to food waste, increasing CO2 emissions, water pollution, over-fertilization, deforestation, loss of arable land, food security, and energy storage have emerged. Climate change urgently needs to be addressed from an ecological and social perspective. Im...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Food security 2020-04, Vol.12 (2), p.253-268
Main Authors: Avgoustaki, Dafni Despoina, Xydis, George
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural land
Agriculture
Air pollution
Arable land
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide emissions
Climate change
Cultivation
Deforestation
Drinking water
Energy conservation
Energy distribution
Energy storage
Environment
Factories
Farming
Fertilization
Food
Food Science
Food security
Food waste
Foodborne diseases
Indoor environments
Industrial plants
Insects
Life Sciences
Pests
Plant production
Plant Sciences
Review
Scientific papers
Social Policy
Social Sciences
Technological change
Urban agriculture
Vertical farming
Water pollution
Water scarcity
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In recent years, several global issues related to food waste, increasing CO2 emissions, water pollution, over-fertilization, deforestation, loss of arable land, food security, and energy storage have emerged. Climate change urgently needs to be addressed from an ecological and social perspective. Implementing new indoor urban vertical farming (IUVF) operations is one way to combat the above-mentioned issues as well as foodborne illnesses, scarcity of drinking water, and more crop failure due to infection from plant pathogens and insect pests. A promising production mode is plant factories (PFs), which are indoor plant production systems completely isolated from outside environment. This paper mainly focuses on the comprehensive review of scientific papers in order to analyse the different applications of urban farming (UF) based on three different dimensions: a) the manufacturing techniques and equipment used; b) the energy that these systems require, the distribution of energy, and ways to minimize the energy-related cost; and c) the technological innovations applied in order to optimize the cultivation possibilities of IUVF.
ISSN:1876-4517
1876-4525
DOI:10.1007/s12571-019-01003-z