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Review
. 2025 Oct 7:16:1640530.
doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1640530. eCollection 2025.

Advances in light manipulation in greenhouse horticulture: the innovative smart covers

Farzaneh Zamani  1 , Luigi Giuseppe Duri  2 , Mauro Mori  1 , Roberta Paradiso  1
Affiliations
Review

Advances in light manipulation in greenhouse horticulture: the innovative smart covers

Farzaneh Zamani et al. Front Plant Sci. .

Abstract

Greenhouses play a key role in modern agriculture by creating controlled environments to fulfil specific plant climatic requirements, allowing the extension of the growing season and improving the crop productivity and product quality. Light, in terms of quantity (intensity), quality (spectral composition), and duration (photoperiod), is a crucial factor in driving plant performance in protected cultivation. Solar radiation is significantly affected by the greenhouse framework and cover material. The use of smart materials, including diffusive, photoselective, luminescent, and switchable covers, can positively modify the light intensity, spectrum, and distribution, improving the greenhouse light environment, hence the plant growth, morphology, and metabolism. This review summarizes the state of art of research on innovative covers suitable for modern greenhouse horticulture and their effects on plant performance in vegetable and ornamental crops.

Keywords: diffusive covers; energy efficiency; luminescent covers; photoselective covers; photosynthesis; switchable covers; temperature regulation.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Venn diagram representing the classification of the 54 research articles collected through the literature review based on the main topics. The distribution in each group is reported as both percentage of the total and number of papers. The diagram was created using the Venny 2.1.0 software (Oliveros J.C., 2007-2015; https://bioinfogp.cnb.csic.es/tools/venny/index.html). Four different colors were assigned to the 4 main categories, and papers were grouped depending on their belonging to a single category or multiple categories, creating subsets derived from the overlap of the main categories.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Schematic representation of light behavior across the different greenhouse cover types. Conventional covers allow the partial transmission of NIR and FR while reflect UV radiation. Diffusive covers (DCs) scatter the incoming solar radiation more uniformly across the canopy, with no effect on light spectrum. Photoselective covers (PhCs) selectively filter the different wavebands, transmitting or reflecting specific wavelengths (e.g., UV, NIR, FR) or switch them to obtain specific spectral changes (e.g., enrichment in B or R). Switchable covers (SCs) dynamically modulate light and heat transmission in response to seasonal climatic changes, providing photothermal cooling in summer and photothermal heating in winter. Solid arrows represent the full light intensity; thin arrows represent the portion of reflected light; dashed arrows indicate the portion of transmitted light; red wavy arrows represent re-radiated or reflected energy.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Material properties and effects on greenhouse environment and plant behavior of the different innovative greenhouse covers.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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