{"id":231967,"date":"2026-02-23T22:38:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T04:38:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/tuning-in-to-fluorescence-to-farm-smarter-monitoring-plant-light-use-saves-indoor-farm-energy-costs"},"modified":"2026-02-23T22:38:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T04:38:18","slug":"tuning-in-to-fluorescence-to-farm-smarter-monitoring-plant-light-use-saves-indoor-farm-energy-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/tuning-in-to-fluorescence-to-farm-smarter-monitoring-plant-light-use-saves-indoor-farm-energy-costs","title":{"rendered":"Tuning in to fluorescence to farm smarter: Monitoring plant light use saves indoor farm energy costs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/tuning-in-to-fluorescence-to-farm-smarter-monitoring-plant-light-use-saves-indoor-farm-energy-costs.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Plant owners with a so-called green thumb often seem to have a more finely tuned sense of what their plants need than the rest of us. A new \u201csmart lighting\u201d system for indoor vertical farms grants this ability on a facility-wide scale, responsively meeting plants\u2019 needs while reducing energy inefficiencies, clearing a path for indoor farms as an energy-efficient food security strategy.<\/p>\n<p>The system was designed and tested in a study led by Professor of Plant Biology Tracy Lawson, who conducted the research at the University of Essex and is now a member of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The work, published in <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.atech.2025.101593\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Smart Agricultural Technology<\/i><\/a>, emerged from her goal to help establish the viability of vertical farming for large-scale food production.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne of the key aspects of [vertical farming], of course, is the energy cost associated with using LED lighting,\u201d Lawson said. \u201cSo that\u2019s where it all started, trying to save energy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Plant owners with a so-called green thumb often seem to have a more finely tuned sense of what their plants need than the rest of us. A new \u201csmart lighting\u201d system for indoor vertical farms grants this ability on a facility-wide scale, responsively meeting plants\u2019 needs while reducing energy inefficiencies, clearing a path for indoor [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1506,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-food","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}