Turning Photons Into Food

In this video Dr. Bruce Bugbee shows the calculations necessary to determine crop yield potential when light is the only limiting factor. This is now widely used to predict yields in indoor agriculture and vertical farming. The approach starts from the efficiency of photosynthesis (measured as quantum yield), expands to include the efficiency of respiration (called carbon use efficiency), and includes photon capture efficiency and harvest index. He uses a model called the Energy Cascade Model. This model has been used by NASA to model the size of a space farm in regenerative food production. It is also used by the USDA to calculate potential yield of agriculture on Earth. 00:52 - Acknowledging NASA and the USDA as the funding agencies for this research 01:41 - Units of calculation for food production in controlled environments 03:25 - The most important equation in the world, particularly to any life scientist 04:31 - Process of photosynthesis 06:22 - Revising how we write the equation for photosynthesis 09:13 - Calculating quantum yield 11:56 - Making ATP energy and respiration 15:15 - Realistic measurements of photons 15:52 - Energy Cascade model 18:44 - Potential yield of crops 19:42 - Exploring a paper he wrote about adding carbon dioxide to plants 20:24 - Economic analysis of indoor agriculture 23:50 - Understanding the rapidly increasing cost of photons through the market price of produce 26:39 - Example of the amount of solar panels needed to provide the energy for perfect indoor agriculture 28:48 - Peering into the future with advances in LED lights and other technology ------ Follow us to see all the cool ways our products are being used, as well as to get notices for free classes, how-to videos, and product announcements! -Facebook   / apogeeinstru.  . -Twitter   / apogeeinst   -LinkedIn   / 1084851   -Instagram   / apogee_inst.  .