LED Technologies
LED IN AGRICULTURE - GREENHOUSES
| Greenhouses protect crops from many diseases, particularly those that are soilborne and splash onto plants in the rain. Knowing the demands of vegetable crops to the light intensity and the demand of quantity and quality in the market, LED lighting has become a must in agriculture. With help of LED lighting in a greenhouse, agricultures can artificially increase the period of daylight, providing the most stable and rapid growth of plants, and as a result the optimal harvest. | The greenhouse agricultural industry is highly influenced by energy factor contributing a great percentage of the total production cost. In regions where light fluctuation makes hard for proper plant growth, an appropriate lighting system is needed. High-Pressure Sodium (HPS) lamps have been the most commonly used lighting systems but they produce a lot of radiant heat and cannot be placed close to plants. A new technology that consumes less energy and produces less radiant heat is thus required in the greenhouse industry. | The greenhouse industry has opted to utilize the energy efficiency offered by LED technology in solid-state lighting. LED has various advantages over the traditional use of gaseous lamps in the greenhouses. Like a semiconductor diode, LED allows the control of the compositions to adapt light intensity necessary for efficient plant growth and processes like photosynthesis and flowering. With LEDs the light and radiant heat are produced for a long period of time unlike with incandescent bulbs whose filament has to be changed from time to time. LED bulbs can be placed closer to the plants and configured to emit different light fluxes and intensities. | Since LEDs are solid-state devices, they can be connected to digital systems to control the light intensity and flux for different plant development stages. However, LED lighting systems are quite expensive for use in the greenhouses and are only efficient mass production to reduce the operating cost. A well designed LED lighting system is preferable for lighting greenhouses over the traditional lighting due to their performance and longevity. Vegetables grown under LED lighting have been proven to give maximum nutritional quality and productivity. LED lighting is thus the future for greenhouse lighting in the agriculture industry. |