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Indoor strawberry cultivation has grown rapidly in recent years, primarily due to advances in plant factories, LED plant lighting, integrated water and fertilizer systems, and intelligent environmental control technologies. Currently, indoor strawberry cultivation has successfully implemented all cultivation methods: soil culture, hydroponics, and aeroponics. This approach transcends seasonal and regional limitations, ensuring a stable year-round supply of high-quality strawberries. However, industrialization still presents some technical and economic challenges.
I. Current Status of Indoor Strawberry Cultivation
1. Main Models
Plant Factory: Utilizes multi-layer racks, LED lighting, and environmental control systems to achieve high-density cultivation.
Greenhouse + Supplemental Lighting System: Modifies traditional greenhouses by adding LED or HPS lights for supplemental lighting and temperature control.
Vertical Farm: High-rise, multi-layer cultivation combined with hydroponics or aeroponics.
2. Application Areas
Japan and South Korea were the first to experiment with strawberry plant factories, primarily focusing on the "Hongyan" and "Zhangji" varieties, targeting the high-end gift market. Europe and the United States: Countries like the Netherlands and the United States emphasize scale and automation, prioritizing flavor and stable market supply.
China: In recent years, the development of this sector has accelerated, focusing primarily on winter supply in northern China, "urban agriculture" near cities, and scientific research and demonstration parks.
3. Development Trends
Targeting the high-end market (premium fruit, e-commerce gift boxes, and sightseeing fruit picking).
Integrating intelligence (AI control, IoT monitoring).
Exploring models for cost reduction through scale.
II. Major Technical Challenges
1. Light and Energy Consumption
Strawberries are sensitive to light intensity and quality and require a high DLI (Daily Photosynthetically Active Radiation), generally 12–20 mol·m⁻²·day⁻¹.
Although LED lighting is effective, it consumes a lot of energy, and electricity costs account for the majority of operating costs.
Optimizing the light spectrum (ratio of red/blue/far-red/green light), lighting duration, and intensity to improve light use efficiency (LUE) is a key challenge.
2. Variety Adaptability
Currently, most strawberry varieties on the market are bred for open-field or greenhouse cultivation and are not fully suited to indoor artificial light environments.
Fruit yield, flavor, and disease resistance often exhibited in indoor environments are suboptimal, necessitating specialized cultivar breeding for artificial environments.
3. Pollination Issues
Indoor environments lack natural wind and insect pollination.
Common solutions:
Introducing bees or bumblebees for pollination, but management is complex in enclosed spaces.
Manual pollination or fan-assisted pollination, however, is labor-intensive.
Automated pollination remains a bottleneck.
4. Disease and Environmental Control
High-density cultivation is prone to diseases such as powdery mildew and gray mold.
In enclosed environments, humidity management, air circulation, and air disinfection are particularly critical.
Achieving clean production without relying on large amounts of pesticides is a challenge.
5. Water and Fertilizer Management
Hydroponic and aeroponic strawberries require high nutrient solution concentration and ion balance. Strawberries are sensitive to elements like potassium, calcium, and iron. Imbalances can easily lead to leaf yellowing, fruit deformities, or a loss of flavor.
Precise monitoring and automated recipe adjustment still need to be optimized.
6. Flavor and Quality
Indoor-grown strawberries may appear uniform, but they often suffer from a lack of flavor, a low sugar-to-acid ratio, and insufficient aromatic compounds.
Flavor can be enhanced through spectral control (far-infrared light/UV-A), temperature control, and nutrient management.
7. Economic Benefits
Indoor strawberry cultivation requires significant investment: lighting, air conditioning, and environmental control equipment are expensive.
High electricity and labor costs make it difficult to reduce costs.
Currently, profitability is primarily based on sales of high-end strawberries (gift strawberries and branded strawberries), making it difficult to compete with open-field or greenhouse strawberries.
Summary
Indoor strawberry cultivation has been demonstrated in Japan, Europe, the United States, and parts of China, but is still in its exploratory phase. The biggest challenges are:
High energy consumption (for lighting and air conditioning)
Lack of suitable specialized varieties
Pollination and disease management
Optimizing flavor quality
Economic cost control
Future breakthroughs include: low-energy LED spectrum design, AI-powered environmental control, automated pollination systems, precise water and fertilizer management, and breeding specialized indoor varieties.
To address the issue of supplemental lighting for strawberries, cosyfarmer, after over 10 years of dedicated research, has successfully overcome several technical challenges and developed a specialized spectrum suitable for strawberry growth. They have also overcome visual limitations and developed a proprietary spectrum suitable for AI control. Our lighting is suitable for various growing scenarios, such as strawberry farming in plant factories, greenhouses, and containerized environments. If you have any needs, please contact us.
