1981 Volume 28 Issue 8 Pages 430-436
Recently, consumer's demand for beans sprouts having 'heavier hypocotyl' (short and thick) is increasing. Present study was carried out to investigate the applicability of artificial lights to produce e fficiently the heavier hypocotyl sptouts, using soybeans, mung beans, and adzuki beans. The beans sprouts were cultivated in the dark chambers at 30°C, and the artificial lights (artificial sunlight lamp, infrared ray lamp, and ultraviolet ray lamp) were applied for 60 minutes every day from 3 days after initiation of cultivation at 500lux, respectively. With three kinds of beans sprouts tested, the application of artificial sunlight showed a marked acceleration of the increases of length, diameter, weight, and hardness of hypocotyls in 1-2 days, and vitamin C content was considerably higher than the sprouts cultivated with conventional method, thus produced heavier hypocotyl sprouts with good quality. Treatment with infrared ray lamp showed a similar tendency, but the effect was inferior to artificial sunlight lamp. From 3 to 5 days after initiation of the application of artificial lights, the hypocotyls of sprouts became too long and thin, and many lateral roots appeared. Application of ultraviolet ray lamp resulted in an inhibition of hypocotyl elongation in 1-2 days. Surface color of the hypocotyls tended to became yellowish by the artificial lights, especially by sunlight lamp, but kept acceptability whithin 2 days.
It is concluded that the short time application of artificial sunlight and infrared ray lamps could shorten the duration of cultivation by 1-2 days to produce the beans sprouts with heavier hypocotyls.
