Developing a robotic multi-shelf plant production system

It is expected that the world population in 2050 will be about 9 billion and the population of Türkiye will be about 97 million. The per capita consumption of fruits and vegetables is increasing more and more in the world. In response to the ever-increasing consumption demand, the production areas are decreasing and the efficiency obtained from these areas is decreasing. For this reason, there is an increased need and search for more efficient alternative production methods in place of traditional production methods. In the study, a robotic crop production system was developed with all its elements such as mechanics, electronics, software and plant nutrients. The operation of the system is based on the fact that the rows of plants move a little every day and move towards the upper floors. During this movement, the distance between the plant and the lighting device is small in the initial stage when the plant height is low, and this distance increases when moving to the upper floors where the plant height is higher. Therefore, similar light intensity at canopy height was achieved by using luminaires with lower power. The plants of lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) grown in the layered robotic plant production system and the fixed plant production system were compared in terms of harvest criteria (time to harvest, total fresh weight of leaves, root weight, number of leaves, etc.). At the same time, the amounts of water and electrical energy consumed by the fixed plant production system and the multi-layer robotic plant production system were recorded and compared. As a result of the study, it was found that the multilayer robotic plant production system consumed 14.4% less energy and collected 41.7% more photons than the stationary vertical cultivation system. While the plants grown in the developed system had 30% higher fresh leaf weight and higher fresh marketable leaf weight, an 11.9% increase in stem diameter and 10% increase in root neck diameter were observed. The developed system had no effect on root fresh weight, root dry weight, shed leaves, marketable leaves, plant height, plant width, root length, water soluble solids, and pH. The water use efficiency of the stratified robotic plant production system and the fixed plant production system developed in the dissertation were calculated to be 0.166 and 0.142, respectively.