ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Technical Advances in Plant Science
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1646310
Integrated Smart Farm System for Centella asiatica L. Cultivation: Development and Assessment of Multi-tier Cultivation Effects on Bioactive Compound Production
Provisionally accepted
- National Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Wanju-gun, Republic of Korea
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Traditional soil-based cultivation of Centella asiatica L. faces seasonal limitations and quality inconsistency. This study developed and assessed a smart farm system incorporating Deep Flow Technique (DFT) hydroponics for stable, year-round production with consistent bioactive compound profiles. System development was conducted at the National Institute of Agricultural Sciences, followed by six-month field assessment at Chungju Agricultural Technology Center, South Korea. The cultivation system comprised a 99 m² greenhouse with 19.2 m² active hydroponic area, maintaining nutrient solution temperature at 20 ± 1°C, EC at 0.9 ± 0.1 dS/m, pH at 5.6 ± 0.2, and light intensity at 90–95 µmol·m⁻²·s⁻¹. We observed differential bioactive compound accumulation between cultivation tiers; however, these differences reflect combined effects of tier positioning and environmental variations rather than isolated lighting effects due to inherent confounding in our multi-tier design. Madecassic acid content was 2.3-fold higher in LED-equipped tier (1.25 ± 0.04 mg/g) versus fluorescent-equipped tier (0.54 ± 0.03 mg/g, p<0.001). The system demonstrated operational reliability, enabling year-round production and establishing a technological foundation for controlled environment medicinal plant cultivation with standardized compound profiles.
Keywords: Centella asiatica, Smart farm, Hydroponics, Controlled environment agriculture, bioactive compounds, DFT system, medicinal plants, Year-round production
Received: 13 Jun 2025; Accepted: 12 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lee, Baek, Im, Heo and Kim. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Hyeonbyeong Lee, National Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Wanju-gun, Republic of Korea
Taehyun Kim, National Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Wanju-gun, Republic of Korea
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