PHOTOSYNTHETICA

Photosynthetica 2022, 60(1):79-87 | DOI: 10.32615/ps.2021.066

An open Internet of Things (IoT)-based framework for feedback controlof photosynthetic activities

S. YUAN¹, H. TANG², L.J. FU¹, J.L. TAN³, G. GOVINDJEE⁴, Y. GUO^{1, 3}

¹ Key Laboratory of Advanced Process Control for Light Industry, Ministry of Education, School of IoT, Jiangnan University, 214122 Wuxi, China

² Lushixin Sci. & Tec. (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., 214124 Wuxi, China

³ Department of Bioengineering, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA

⁴ Center of Biophysics & Quantitative Biology, Department of Biochemistry and Department of Plant Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA

Active control of photosynthetic activities is important in plant physiological study. Although models of plant photosynthesis have been built at different scales, they have not been fully examined for their application in plant growth control. However, we do not have an infrastructure to support such experiments since current plant growth chambers usually use fixed control protocols. In our current paper, an open IoT-based framework is proposed. This framework allows a plant scientist or agricultural engineer, through an application programming interface (API), in a desirable programming language, (1) to gather environmental data and plant physiological responses; (2) to program and execute control algorithms based on their models, and then (3) to implement real-time commands to control environmental factors. A plant growth chamber was developed to demonstrate the concept of the proposed open framework.

Additional key words: chlorophyll fluorescence; greenhouse; Internet of things; open framework; photosynthesis model; plant growth chamber.

Received: August 16, 2021; Revised: November 7, 2021; Accepted: December 7, 2021; Prepublished online: January 20, 2022; Published: March 18, 2022  Show citation