Light Engine Design’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Tall Trees LED Company, announces an expanding partnership with a prominent nutraceutical company in Oklahoma. Tall Trees will be providing technical consulting and operational management, as well as LED lighting for both the indoor and greenhouse facilities. Tall Trees LED Company, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Light Engine Design, focuses on research, development, manufacturing, and sales of Solid-State Lighting (SSL) in the Controlled Environment Agriculture industries. The facility in Oklahom...

The legalization of medical and recreational use of cannabis in North America has opened a wide door for LED lighting in horticulture application for cannabis cultivation. An increasing number of cannabis growers and cannabis grow light suppliers are joining the market. ecofarm from Massachusetts, U.S., announced the launch of the largest indoor cultivation sites in the country at Marijuana Business Conference (MJBizCon), the cannabis industry's most respected global trade show. (Image: ecofarm) ecofarm will operate as a Tier 11 marijuana cultivator and produc...

SpecGrade LED, a US-based industrial LED lighting manufacturer, announced its progress of LED grow light. Its horticultural lighting products have been certificated by Underwriters Laboratory (UL) and approved by the DesignLights Consortium (DLS). The company’s LED grow light series, the Verta-8 and Verta-4, acquired the UL 8800 Certification offered by UL. The certification was set due to the uniquely harsh environment of a grow facility, where dust, dampness, and air debris combined with high temperatures and humidity combine to create a unique ...

The DesignLights Consortium (DLC) has published an updated version of the Testing and Reporting Requirements for Horticulture Lighting in the beginning of March and announced the first horticultural lighting products that meet the new performance standard. With rapid increasing indoor farming facilities and legalized cannabis cultivation in several US states and Canada, demands for efficient and effective horticultural lighting are booming. In response to the boosting market, DLC DLC released an industry benchmark designed to improve efficiency and reduce electrici...

Indoor farming with controlled environment and LED lighting has brought agriculture to another level. Osram, as a leading photonic producer, has been an active player in the development of horticulture lighting. The company announced the development of LED-based luminaire system, Phytofy RL, which is designed to meet the increasing demands of horticulture researches at universities, private institutes and plant production in greenhouses and vertical farms. (Image: Osram) Phytofy RL is a tunable lighting system integrated UV to far-red LEDs to create various growth...

The importance of LED lighting applications in the horticultural industry is increasing with the on-going trend of indoor and vertical farming applications. With controllable spectrum and illuminance, LED lighting is widely used in cultivation for various kinds of crops including tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs, greens and cannabis. LEDinside notices that many LED and lighting companies have increased their product portfolio for horticulture lighting and pushed related technology development. According to the report of LEDinside, titled “2019 Light LED and LED ...

Cree announced the launch of the next-generation XLamp® XP-E2 Photo Red (660 nm) and Far Red (730 nm) LEDs that deliver breakthrough performance for horticulture applications. The new Red XP-E2 LEDs provide a drop-in upgrade for the previous generation that outperforms competing LEDs by up to 68 percent. These higher-performance horticulture LEDs increase the efficiency of LED luminaires and shorten their payback periods, making it more affordable to grow food under optimized lighting. (Image: Cree) “Lettuce and tomato farmers in the UK, th...

Signify reported that two French vegetable growers have installed its LED horticulture lighting for their greenhouses to grow cucumbers year-round. Jardins Réunis and Cheminant have both installed Philips GreenPower LED toplighting and Philips GreenPower LED interlighting in their new cucumber greenhouses in the Nantes region of France. The growers are the first to grow high-wire cucumbers with LED lighting in the country, showing their leadership as members of the Océane grower cooperative. (Image: Signify) Signify noted that LED light...

OPTEC International, a green technologies provider, announced that it has signed the exclusive North American distribution rights agreement for the "Pro-Sun" LED Horticultural Grow Lamps in a timely procedure as the U.S. Congress signs the Multi-Billion Dollar "Farm Bill". In December 2018, the U.S. Congress passed the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, so called “Farm Bill,” which legalized marijuana growth in the U.S. As LED lighting is wide used in the cultivation of cannabis LED, LED grow light demands is ...

Horticulture lighting applications have become a critical market for the LED industry. LED lighting enables researchers and growers to break the limitation of conventional farming regarding the weather and space. With the help of LED lighting, innovative horticultural researches and activities were reported from all around the world. Various cultivation methods were developed to grow crops in places that we would not consider possible in the past. With the end of the year approaching, let’s look back at how scientists and industry innovators have used LED lighting to...

Bowery Farming, an indoor autonomous farming startup from New York, has raised US$ 90 million in Series B funding from investors including GV (formerly Google Ventures). and CEO of Uber, Dara Khosrowshahi. The company began operating in February 2017 and has opened two vertical farming facilities near New York since then. Bowery Farming applies technologies including robotics, machine learning and predictive analytics to autonomously operate the growing conditions for the crops. Vegetables are grown with controlled environment with optimized LED lighting spectr...

Osram announced that it is going to showcase its cutting-edge technologies in a wide range of applications including mobility, connectivity, safety and security, and well-being and health at CES 2019. Osram will present sensors for self-driving vehicles, as well as Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS), and biometric identification applications. With the introduction of two new infrared LEDs, Osram enable biometric applications such as iris scan, driver monitoring, as well as facial and gesture recognition in vehicles. (Image: Osram) As for light emitting ap...

Chinese e-commerce company JD.com, has opened a plant factory adopting hydroponic technology provided by Mitsubishi Chemical to supply fresh food for its online and offline customers. Through the strategic collaboration with Mitsubishi Chemical, JD.com plans to increase its capability of food production in order to control and monitor the quality of its food products. The company aims to set up to 10 plant factories in China. The newly built facility locates in the Tongzhou District of Beijing and is expected to produce 300 tons of vegetable annually with its 11,040 square...

Seven-Eleven Japan will grow vegetables for its own salads products sold at convenience stores by establishing a plant factory in Tokyo, reported Nikkei Asian Review. Seven-Eleven is the largest convenience store operator in Japan and it began the project in order to reduce the supply risks caused by weather. The indoor farming facility will be set up in Kanagawa Prefecture to produce lettuce for stores in the Greater Tokyo Area. (Image: Osram) According to the report, the facility will cost about 6 billion yen (US$53.3 million) and is scheduled to operate in J...

The American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) has released the second in a three-part series of standards which addresses LED radiation measurements for plant growth and development. (Image: ASABE) ASABE is a standards developing organization dedicated to advancing applicable engineering methods for agriculture, food and biological systems. The standard, ANSI/ASABE S642, titled “Recommended Methods for Measurement and Testing of LED Products for Plant Growth and Development,” describes the methods used f...

Porta Nova, a rose grower based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, is expanding its Philips GreenPower LED toplighting to trail a dedicated rose spectrum which will increase light levels year-round without increasing heat. The company decided to expand its invest of the lighting coverage to 5,000 square meters.

Heliospectra announced that a Spain-based medicinal plant research center and an AgTech company have ordered its LED lighting solutions. The production shipment of their orders is scheduled in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to Heliospectra.

Current, powered by GE has provided its Arize horticultural lighting solution to Stockbridge Technology Centre’s newly opened Vertical Farming Development Facility which enables growers to test and model their individual urban farm setup prior to investment. 

Alabama Power has established an innovation project to grow food in a shipping container retrofitted with LED lighting provided by Freight Farm. The aim of the project is to find out if the cost of using electricity to power indoor agriculture is more efficient and feasible in comparison with traditional agriculture.

The development of LED applications in horticulture has continued to transform our understanding of farming. Delphy, a Dutch company, has recently conducted research on growing raspberries and blackberries with LED lighting, aiming to harvest them during winter.

A Cincinnati-based indoor farming company, 80 Acres Farms, has announced its plan to build a vertical farm in Hamilton, Ohio, which will be the first fully automated indoor farm in the U.S.

Heliospectra has announced that the company received orders from an Australian manufacturer and researcher who provide products and services to the international pharmaceutical industry. The Australian company has invested around US$ 78,000 for Heliospectra’s ELIXIA LED lighting solution.

VividGro is the horticultural LED division of Lighting Science Group Corporation and has released a control system, named FlowerMax, for the flowering stage for all crops.