As a professional in the horticultural industry, you have most likely heard about LED grow lights and the benefits for commercial greenhouses. LED grow lights are a rapidly growing market that is revolutionizing greenhouse farming with innovative solutions and unparalleled controllability.
This may sound overwhelmingly advanced – but in reality, all nurseries can benefit from LED grow light systems regardless of the crop, grower or existing lighting system.
Dutch grower Bas Carsten expanded from 10 LED luminaires to half a hectare and increased production by 50%. Read the story here.
What are LED grow lights?
LED grow lights for horticulture are powerful LED luminaires, which means they have the intensity and color spectrum required to stimulate plant growth. The most critical difference between LED systems and traditional lighting is that LED grow lights allow the grower to control the spectral distribution. This has a major impact on both crop quality and production methods.
Traditional light sources like HPS have a relatively dispersed spectral distribution, mostly saturated around the green region of the spectrum, whereas our LED grow lights are focused in their intensity especially on red and blue light. This corresponds perfectly to the photosynthetic action spectrum and thus matches the light composition that plants enjoy most.
The photosynthetic action spectrum
Plants have a primary need for red light, which starts photosynthetic processes and affects germination and florescence. Blue light is also important as it controls plant size, elongation, red pigmentation and in some cases taste.
4 main reasons why controllable LED systems are essential for your business
Due to its unique controllability, LED grow lights have a number of benefits that will enable you to boost your business.
- Fine-tune the spectral distribution
The optimal spectral distribution and light intensity depends on your specific crop. Thus, it is impossible for lights with a fixed spectrum to cover all the needs of all cultures and different crops. Unlike traditional luminaires like HPS and SON’T, LED luminaires allow you to customize and adjust the spectral distribution specifically to benefit your crop – both now and in the future. - Scale up or convert production
If you choose to scale up your production facilities, add new cultures to your production or completely convert your production, LED growth lights can easily adapt to the new conditions. In other words, the controllability of LED luminaires enables the system to change and grow with your business when needed. - Lower energy costs
Traditional light fixtures create excess heat and are not energy efficient. This is usually associated with significant costs. Because LED lights produce the exact amount and type of light your crop requires, less energy is wasted. In other words, you only pay for the light you actually need. - Improve product quality
Take control of your crop’s size, stretch, color or even taste. Being able to adjust light composition allows you to improve product quality in ways that are simply impossible with traditional lights. In addition, LED lighting means you can reduce the amount of chemicals needed in production.
Is your business ready for LED grow lights?
Most, if not all, people in the horticultural industry agree that LED lighting systems are an important part of the future of horticulture. Although the market is somewhat saturated with inferior and underpowered low-cost LED bars, developments in the field have become so far-reaching that the benefits of LED technology are impossible to dismiss.
Today, every commercial nursery can benefit from LED grow lights – regardless of size, culture or growers’ existing knowledge of LED lighting.
Did you know? Experience with traditional lighting and light intensity control can be transferred to LED lighting by converting watts per square meter to micromoles per square meter.
Contact our experts today
DGT by Senmatic is the market leader in LED growth systems and we strive to help you grow your business. Read more about our business areas or contact us to learn more about our LED growth systems.
“Our customers know their exact production best, and they often have an idea of which systems suit their production needs. At DGT by Senmatic, we help initiate the implementation of the LED system by creating a lighting plan with precise calculations for ideal light dispersion – and because we are not only experts in LED systems, we can adapt the installation to your remaining climate control. We continue to assist in the implementation process until everything works as desired”
Johnny Rasmussen Business Development Manager at DGT by Senmatic
