Importance of trialing lighting alternatives

Confused by all the lighting options available for your research? Avoid investing in the wrong solution with this video featuring Reg Quiring as he shares his 30 years of experience in plant growth chamber design and development.

As growth chambers and rooms emerged in the 1960s and 70s the primary light sources were Very High Output (VHO) fluorescent tubes. In the early 1980s, HID lighting such as High Pressure Sodium (HPS), Metal Halide (MH), and more recently Ceramic Metal Halide (CMH) started to be integrated as researchers started to call for higher intensity lighting for their plants.

Fluorescent lighting was the standard default for many years and has been used in tens of thousands of chambers around the world. LED lighting technology for growth chambers is still relatively new and offers significant advantages such as energy efficiency. LED lighting also started to surface in user requests more often when it became apparent that controlling the spectrum would be another variable of interest in the discovery process or for eliciting a certain type of plant response.

While the benefits of using LEDs in plant growth chambers and rooms is indeed attractive it can lead to challenges. This video discusses unintended impacts on plant response that may occur that would be best discovered before rolling out a large scale research or plant propagation program. Trialing ahead of any significant capital expenditure can serve to reduce risk of disruption or delay to your research or your organization’s revenue stream.