README file
# FAIR Dataset — Experimental dataset on the effects of end-of-day and continuous far-red on vegetative and flower induction in Cannabis sativa

Dataset title: “Experimental dataset on the effects of end-of-day and continuous far-red on vegetative and flower induction in Cannabis sativa”

Dataset Author: Fabio Perotti (Distal, University of Bologna), ORCID 0009-0005-6149-1645; Giuseppina Pennisi (Distal, University of Bologna), ORCID 0000-0001-9377-4811; Matteo Landolfo (Distal, University of Bologna), ORCID 0009-0005-8680-4564; Walter Menozzi; Carlo Gravina; Giorgio Gianquinto (Distal, University of Bologna), ORCID 0000-0002-6548-5526; Francesco Orsini (Distal, University of Bologna), ORCID 0000-0001-6956-7054

Dataset Contact Person: Fabio Perotti (Distal, University of Bologna), ORCID 0009-0005-6149-1645, fabio.perotti2@unibo.it 

Publication Year: 2025

Acknowledgment: The research leading to this publication has received funding from the EU - NextGenerationEU with funds made available by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) Mission 4, Component 2, Investment 3.3 (M.D. 117/2023) CN AGRITECH and by Nova Era Società Agricola r.l.. CUP: J33C22001150008; ID: CN00000022. 

Dataset License: this data set is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-4.0 International (CC BY-4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Dataset Contents

The data set consists of: 

•	1 quantitative data file saved in .csv format 
"Perottietal_EOD_Dataset.csv"

•	1 README file saved in .txt format
“ Perottietal2025_README.txt"

## Dataset documentation
#Abstract
This dataset presents experimental data derived during an experiment to evaluate the effects of end-of-day (EOD) and continuous far-red (FR) light on vegetative growth and flower induction in Cannabis sativa L. under controlled environment conditions. The experiment compared three lighting strategies, a red-blue spectrum (RB) as control, red and blue plus continuous far-red supplementation, and red-blue with far-red applied only during the final hour of the light period—during the transition from vegetative to reproductive stages. The dataset documents morphological, physiological, and phenological responses of 36 plants, including canopy development, fresh and dry biomass, multispectral reflectance indices, energy parameters, and flowering progression. Results show that both EOD and continuous FR promoted greater canopy elongation compared to RB, with a shift in biomass allocation favoring leaf development. Far-red treatments also enhanced chlorophyll accumulation, indicating improved photosynthetic efficiency, while flower induction timing remained unaffected across treatments. Overall, this dataset provides a comprehensive quantitative foundation to assess how light spectrum modulation—particularly the timing of far-red exposure—shapes plant architecture and physiological performance in Cannabis sativa. 

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## Methodologies

#Experimental Overview

This dataset originates from a controlled-environment experiment conducted on Cannabis sativa L. var. Mango (Chemotype III, CBD-dominant) at the Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences (DISTAL), University of Bologna (Italy). The trial ran from 19 March to 6 May 2024. A total of 72 plants were grown, of which 36 were used for measurements (6 plants × 2 replicates × 3 lighting treatments) and 36 served as buffer plants at the border of the growing area. Plants were cultivated under stable environmental conditions (25 ± 3 °C; 55–70% RH). The study followed a split-plot design. All measured variables included plant morphological traits, biomass allocation, phenological development, physiological indices, and energy-use metrics.
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# Light Treatments

| Treatment                            | Spectrum & Intensity                                                     | R:FR ratio | DLI (daily light integral) (mol m⁻² d⁻¹) | Energy (kWh m⁻²) |Photoperiod|
|--------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------|------------|------------------------------------------|------------------------------|
| **RB (Control without far-red)**     | Red + Blue            | 240 µmol R + 80 µmol B                           | High       | 13.83                                    | 1.44             |12h        |
| **FR (Continuous far-red)**          | RB + FR throughout    | 225 µmol R + 75 µmol B + 20 µmol FR              | 10         | 13.83                                    | 1.51             |12h        |
| **EOD (Far- red end-of-day)**        | RB for 11h + 1h RB+FR | 220 µmol R + 73 µmol B + 220 µmol FR (final hour)| 1          | 13.83                                    | 1.47             |12h        |

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# Measurements Collected

- **Morphological**: plant height using a ruler, stem diameter with a digital caliper, number of leaves, internode number, petiole length and LAI using ImageJ
- **Biomass**: fresh and dry weights of leaves, stem, roots, and total biomass  
- **Flowering**: flowering initiation (pistil emergence)  
- **Physiological**: Using Plant explorer pro + by Phenovation (Wageningen, The Netherlands) for the assessment of chlorophyll index, NDVI, anthocyanin index  
- **Energy**: lighting energy consumption, Energy Use Efficiency (EUE)  

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# Imaging processing
The dataset contains references to image-based measurements produced by the Plant Explorer Pro+ phenotyping system. The raw images themselves are not included in this dataset. All imaging data included in the dataset correspond to processed feature-level outputs generated by the Phenovation proprietary 'Data Analysis' software associated with the Plant Explorer Pro+. The raw images captured by the system were processed internally through the following steps:

- Acquisition under controlled settings: The system uses a fixed imaging chamber with defined lighting (multispectral LEDs, actinic / saturating pulses for fluorescence, filter wheels for different wavelengths), ensuring reproducible capture conditions across time and samples.
- Image collection: After selecting the protocol and resolution, the system acquires one true-color images (RGB), multispectral reflectance images, spectral reflectance at specific wavelengths. 
PhenoVation
- Analysis using Data Analysis software: For each image (or set of images), after adjusting stretch levels and the mask the images were analyzed.
- Data export: The software aggregates the extracted trait data and exports them in tabular form (e.g., CSV or similar), which constitutes the dataset you are submitting. These exported tables — not the raw images — are what is included in the data deposit.

# Instruments & Methods

- **Environmental control**: 25 ± 3 °C; RH 55–70 %  
- **Imaging**: Plant Explorer Pro+ (PhenoVation), processed with “Data Analysis Software v5.8.3–64b”  
- **Leaf area & petiole length processing software**: ImageJ 1.54g, Wayne Rasband and contributors, National Institutes of Health, USA
- **Precision balance**: Kern and Sohn analytical balances  
- **Statistical analysis**: in R environment using Rstudio 2024.12.0 Build 467 © 2009-2024 Posit Software, PBC "Kousa Dogwood" Release (cf37a3e5, 2024-12-11) for windows Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) RStudio/2024.12.0+467 Chrome/126.0.6478.234 Electron/31.7.6 Safari/537.36, Quarto 1.5.57;
- **Statistical method**: One-way ANOVA 

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# Dataset Structure

The dataset is organized in different sections in `Perottietal_EOD_Dataset.csv`:

1. `Biomass` — fresh and dry weights for plant organs 
2. `Morphological` — stem diameter, height, Leaf area index (LAI), leaf and internode counts  
3. `Petiole length` — petiole length per plant and treatment  
4. `Flowering time` — binary flowering occurrence over time  
5. `Energy use efficiency` — daily energy use and calculated EUE  
6. `Phenotyping` — multispectral reflectance and object geometry parameters

All variables are fully described in the table below.

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# List of variables

### `Biomass` from line 1 to 39
| Variable      | Description                   | Unit   |
|---------------|-------------------------------|--------|
| `Treatment`   | Light treatment               | —      |
| `Replicates`  | Biological replicate          | —      |
| `Plant N°`    | Plant identifier              | —      |
| `Leaves FW`   | Fresh weight of leaves        | g      | 
| `Stem FW`     | Fresh weight of stems         | g      |
| `Root FW`     | Fresh weight of roots         | g      |
| `TOT FW`      | Total fresh weight            | g      |
| `Leaves DW`   | Dry weight of leaves          | g      |
| `Stem DW`     | Dry weight of stems           | g      |
| `Root DW`     | Dry weight of roots           | g      |
| `TOT DW`      | Total dry weight              | g      |

### `Morphological` from line 45 to 658
| Variable            | Description              | Unit   |
|---------------------|--------------------------|--------|
| `DAT`               | Days after transplanting | days   |
| `Treatment`         | Light treatment          | —      |
| `Replicates`        | Biological replicate     | —      |
| `PlantN`            | Plant identifier         | —      |
| `Stem diameter`     | Stem diameter at base    | mm     |
| `Leaves number`     | Number of leaves         | —      |
| `Internodes number` | Number of internodes     | —      |
| `PH`                | Plant height             | cm     |
| `LAI`               | Leaf Area Index          | m² m⁻²|

### `Petiole length` from line 664 to 845
| Variable         | Description          | Unit |
|------------------|----------------------|------|
| `Treatment`      | Light treatment      | —    |
| `Replicate`      | Biological replicate | —    |
| `Plant`          | Plant identifier     | —    |
| `Petiole length` | Petiole length       | cm   |

### `Flowering time` from line 851 to 888
| Variable        | Description                                                 | Unit |
|-----------------|-------------------------------------------------------------|------|
| `Treatment`     | Light treatment                                             | —    |
| `Replicates`    | Biological replicate                                        | —    |
| `Plant N°`      | Plant identifier                                            | —    |
| `25.04.24` etc. | Binary flowering observation (0=not flowering, 1=flowering) | —    |

### `Energy use efficiency` from line 893 to 930
| Variable           | Description                        | Unit    |
|--------------------|------------------------------------|---------|
| `Treatment`        | Light treatment                    | —       |
| `Replicate`        | Biological replicate               | —       |
| `Plant n°`         | Plant identifier                   | —       |
| `DailyConsumption` | Daily energy consumption           | kWh     |
| `EUE`              | Energy Use Efficiency (g DW / kWh) | g kWh⁻¹ |

### `Phenotyping` from line 936 to 973
| Variable           | Description                           | Unit |
|--------------------|---------------------------------------|------|
| `Treatment`        | Light treatment                       | —    |
| `Replicate`        | Biological replicate                  | —    |
| `Plant N°`         | Plant identifier                      | —    |
| `Date`, `Time`     | Date and time of image acquisition    | —    |
| `Chl.Idx           | Chlorophyll index                     | —    |
| `Ari.Idx `         | Relative anthocyanin estimation       | —    |
| `NDVI`             | Normalized Difference Vegetation Index| —    |
Further analyses were performed on the chl.Idx by segmenting the image into five classes in order to compare the distribution of chlorophyll pigments. The thresholds used for this classification were: (I) 3000–5000, (II) 5001–8000, (III) 8001–10000, (IV) 10001–25000, and (V) 25001–65535.
| `Chl I–V (px)`     | Pixel count per chlorophyll threshold | px   |
| `Chl I–V (%)`      | % of area per chlorophyll threshold   | %    |

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Notes
The data are presented in the following publication: Perotti F., Pennisi G., Landolfo M., Gravina C., Menozzi W., Gianquinto G., Orsini F. Optimizing light spectra for cannabis: effects of end-of-day and continuous far-red on vegetative and flower induction.