Effects of light quality on the growth, mineral, and functional contents of green and red amaranth

Authors

  • Yukiko Tomari College of Agriculture, Tamagawa University, Tokyo, Japan https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9872-1890
  • Gauri Maharjan Horticulture LED Solutions, Signify, Eindhoven, Netherlands
  • Hiroyuki Watanabe College of Agriculture, Tamagawa University, Tokyo, Japan

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5073/JABFQ.2023.096.016

Abstract

Amaranth (Amaranthus tricolor L.) is a highly nutritious leafy vegetable, and the varieties have bright light green (green amaranth) and red (red amaranth) leaves. Light quality control is an important factor for high vegetable productivity in plant factories; however, the effects of light quality on growth, mineral compositions, and functional contents of amaranth have not been investigated. In this experiment, green and red amaranth seedlings were transplanted 28 days after sowing to a plant factory, with three LED treatments with different red/blue ratios and the presence or absence of far-red light, and cultivated for 24 days. Results showed that the growth of red amaranth was enhanced by the white and far-red light with the lowest blue light ratio, whereas the betalain and β-carotene contents in green amaranth were considerably enhanced by the middle blue light ratio. The highest iron content in both varieties was obtained under the light condition with the highest blue light ratio. Our findings suggest that amaranth yield can be increased, and their carotenoid, betalain, and mineral contents can be controlled by adjusting far-red and blue light intensities. The results of this study will help in light quality control during amaranth production in plant factories.

Downloads

Published

2023-11-20

Issue

Vol. 96 (2023): Journal of Applied Botany and Food Quality

Section

Plant breeding and cultivation

License

Copyright (c) 2023 The Author(s)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

From Volume 92 (2019) on, the content of the journal is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Any user is free to share and adapt (remix, transform, build upon) the content as long as the original publication is attributed (authors, title, year, journal, issue, pages) and any changes are labelled.

The copyright of the published work remains with the authors. If you want to use published content beyond what the CC-BY license permits, please contact the corresponding author, whose contact information can be found on the last page of the respective article. In case you want to reproduce content from older issues (before CC BY applied), please contact the corresponding author to ask for permission.