As LED lighting technologies continue to advance, the demand for efficient thermal solutions has increased drastically. In addition, high power LEDs have triggered manufacturers to redesign heat sinks to make them more compact and have better heat dissipation. To better understand the development trends of thermal solutions, LEDinside interviewed Koen Vangorp, General Manager of Taiwan-based MechaTronix, at the 2017 Taiwan International Lighting Show (TILS). 

LumiGrow, a smart horticultural lighting company, announced that they’ve begun a pilot program for the industry’s first dynamic horticultural grow light sensor.  The grow light sensor works in tandem with LumiGrow LEDs to target the precise amount of light that a plant receives.  By specifying precise light levels, greenhouse crops can experience perfect lighting conditions regardless of changes in weather or other light-limiting factors.

Vertical farming is still on the rise globally and with it the need for grow lights which produce minimal heat and can be positioned close to the plants. For vertical farming to be profitable, plants need to go from seed to supermarket shelves in ever decreasing time spans, while savings must be made at every turn. Next to infrastructural investments at the beginning, electricity and temperature regulation are some of the major costs for vertical farmers.

Plessey, a major developer of award-winning LED technologies and manufacturer of solid-state lighting products, announces it is running horticultural lighting trials with four of the Netherlands’ leading growers: Villa Gerbera (growing a crop of gerbera), Gebr. Koot BV (tomatoes), Together2Grow (alstroemeria), and Slijkerman Kalanchoe (kalanchoe). 

Increasingly, vegetables are being efficiently grown using soilless techniques such as hydroponics. Hydroponic systems are favored for their ability to improve water and nutrient use efficiency and crop yields, and have the added benefit of allowing growers to use fewer chemical fertilizers. Researchers in China and United Kingdom studied the effects of LED light combinations on lettuce grown in hydroponic systems to determine whether the treatments could reduce nitrate accumulation, and to find out what effect the treatments might have on phytochemical levels.

Ohneka Farms, a New York-based design studio focus on organic foods, launched a fund-raising campaign on Indiegogo to raise US $75,000 on an experimental hydroponics vitrine, the ROOT.

Worldwide Grow Lights for Agriculture markets are poised to achieve significant growth as the food supply for the world starts to adopt automated process. Grow lights have become more sophisticated and less expensive to run as solar and wind energy are adopted by greenhouses and plant factories. LED grow lights offer quality for growing, homogenous light distribution at precisely the right wavelengths.