Horticulture LED applications have become more and more popular as LED lighting uses less energy and delivers more efficient light source for cultivation with its feature of adjustable intensity and wavelength. To prove the advantages of LED lighting in horticultural applications, researchers at the University of Guelph, Canada, tried to find out to what degree LED advancements could benefit greenhouses.

Dave Llewellyn, Katherine Schiestel, and Youbin Zheng from the University of Guelph investigate the potential for LED lighting technologies to replace conventional high pressure sodium (HPS) lighting systems by comparing the production of cut gerbera under both light source at the same canopy-level intensities.

(Image:David Llwellyn, University of Guelph)

The team cultivated three varieties of cut gerbera under both LED and HPS supplement lighting with minimal treatment differences in leaf, soil, and air temperatures. With the experiment, researchers found out flowers with LED treatment were larger and higher in comparison with the flower treated with HPS lighting. The study then concluded that flowers grown with LED lighting had equivalent or better production than those grown under HPS lighting.

The research result is published in HortScience in January 2019, titled "Light-emitting Diodes Can Replace High-pressure Sodium Lighting for Cut Gerbera Production."