Not All Light Spectra Were Created Equal: Can We Harvest Light for Optimum Food‐Energy Co‐Generation?

Abstract

Abstract Humanity's growing appetites for food and energy are placing unprecedented yield targets on our lands. Chasing those ever‐expanding land intensification targets gave rise to monocultures and sharpened the divide between food and energy production groups. Here, we argue that this does not have to be a zero‐sum game if food and energy can be co‐generated in the same land. Co‐generation can lead to sustainable intensification but requires a paradigm shift in the way we manage our resources, particularly light. Using an extended model of plant photosynthesis and transpiration, we demonstrate how plants react to different incident light spectra and show that manipulating light could be effective for boosting land and water efficiencies, thus potentially improving soil health. This knowledge can possibly unlock the real potential of promising modern agricultural technologies that target optimization of light allocations such as agrivoltaics. This study suggests that the blue part of the light spectrum is less efficient in terms of carbon assimilation and water use and could be more effectively used to produce solar energy, while the red part could efficiently produce biomass. A sensitivity analysis to the most important crop and environmental variables (irradiance, air temperature, humidity, and CO2 concentration) shows that plant response to different light treatments is sensitive to environmental boundary conditions and is species‐specific. Therefore, further research is necessary to assess which crops and climates are more suitable to optimize the proposed food‐water‐energy nexus.

Keywords

• co‐generation
• sustainability
• food‐energy‐water nexus
• photosynthesis