Agrivoltaic (agriculture–photovoltaic) or solar sharing has gained growing recognition as a promising means of integrating agriculture and solar-energy harvesting. Although this field offers great potential, data on the impact on crop growth and development are insufficient. As such, this study examines the impact of agriculture–photovoltaic farming on crops using energy information and communications technology (ICT). The researched crops were grapes, cultivated land was divided into six sections, photovoltaic panels were installed in three test areas, and not installed in the other three. A 1300 × 520 mm photovoltaic module was installed on a screen that was designed with a shading rate of 30%. In addition, to collect farming-cultivation-environment data and to analyze power generation, sensors for growing environments and wireless-communication devices were used. As a result, normal modules generated 25.2 MWh, bifacial modules generated 21.6 MWh, and transparent modules generated 25.7 MWh over a five-month period. We could not find a difference in grape growth according to the difference of each module. However, a slight slowing of grape growth was found in the experiment group compared to the control group. Nevertheless, the sugar content of the test area of the grape fruit in the harvest season was 17.6 Brix on average, and the sugar content of the control area was measured at 17.2 Brix. Grape sugar-content level was shown to be at almost the same level as that in the control group by delaying the harvest time by about 10 days. In conclusion, this study shows that it is possible to produce renewable energy without any meaningful negative impact on normal grape farming.

This study addresses the propagation challenges faced by ‘Shine Muscat’, a newly introduced premium grapevine cultivar in South Korea, where multiple viral infections pose considerable economic loss. The primary objective was to establish a robust in vitro propagation method for producing disease-free grapes and to identify effective plant growth regulators to facilitate large-scale mass cultivation. After experimentation, 2.0 µM 6-benzyladenine (BA) exhibited superior shoot formation in the Murashige and Skoog medium compared with kinetin and thidiazuron. Conversely, α-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) hindered shoot growth and induced callus formation, while indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) and indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) demonstrated favorable root formation, with IBA showing better results overall. Furthermore, inter simple sequence repeat analysis confirmed the genetic stability of in vitro-cultivated seedlings using 2.0 μM BA and 1.0 μM IBA, validating the suitability of the developed propagation method for generating disease-free ‘Shine Muscat’ grapes. These findings offer promising prospects for commercial grape cultivation, ensuring a consistent supply of healthy grapes in the market.

Fruit ripening involves changes in physical, physiological and metabolic activities through the actions of enzymes and regulatory genes. This study was initiated to identify the genes related to the ripening of kiwifruit. Gold ‘Haegeum’ kiwifruit is a yellow-fleshed kiwifruit cultivar usually used for fresh marketing. The fruit is harvested at a physiologically mature but unripe stage for proper storage, marketing distribution and longer shelf life. To identify the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) during ripening, fruit treated with ethylene were compared with control fruit that ripened naturally without ethylene treatment. Firmness, respiration rate, ethylene production rate, total soluble solids (TSS), titratable acidity (TA), brix acid ratio (BAR) and overall acceptability were taken during the study as fruit ripening indicators. Total mRNAs were sequenced by Illumina high-throughput sequencing platform and the transcriptome gene set was constructed by de novo assembly. We identified 99,601 unigenes with an average length of 511.77 bp in transcriptome contigs. A total of 28,582 differentially expressed unigenes were identified in the ethylene treatment vs. control. Of these 28,582 unigenes, 13,361 and 15,221 genes were up- and downregulated, respectively, in the treated fruit. The results also showed that 1682 and 855 genes were up- and downregulated, respectively, more than 2-fold at p < 0.05 in fruit treated with ethylene as compared with the control fruit. Moreover, we identified 75 genes showing significantly different expression; 42 were upregulated, and 33 were downregulated. A possible category of the identified ripening-related genes was also made. The findings of this study will add to the available information on the effect of ethylene treatment on ripening and the related changes of kiwifruit at the genomic level, and it could assist the further study of genes related to ripening for kiwifruit breeding and improvement.