Plant factory technology as a powerful tool for improving vegetable quality: lettuce as an application example

Consumer demand for higher quality and nutrient-dense fresh vegetables is increasing. Therefore, superior varieties and improved cultivation methods are urgently needed to improve vegetable quality. Plant factory technology (PFT) offers an advanced agricultural system in which environmental factors may be precisely controlled, yet is remains necessary to study and predict the influence of plant factory technology (PFT) on vegetable quality due to the long breeding processes required in dynamic artificial environments. Here, a new lettuce cultivar was selected for a case study on promoting breeding processes using PFT. High-quality vegetables were produced using PFT by precisely controlling environmental factors, such as light recipes, temperature ranges, CO₂ levels, and nutrients, which resulted in a higher nutritional content over a much shorter period of time than would occur under open field cultivation. Consequently, PFT shows great potential in facilitating breeding and cultivation practices and achieving stable vegetable quality among harvests.