What does dynamic LED lighting mean, and what does it offer greenhouse growers? Dynamic lighting, also called adaptive lighting, smart or AI-powered lighting, is programmable, allowing growers to create tailored lighting for specific plants. With access to hundreds of light recipes, Sollum’s fully dynamic LED fixtures and SUN as a service® platform make it possible for growers to have multiple lighting zones – each zone can be controlled independently – and offers real-time dimming capabilities of light spectra and light intensity throughout the greenhouse. This high-level control of greenhouse lighting helps growers to increase yields, improve crop quality and reduce energy costs.
Sollum Technologies is the only company that provides greenhouse growers with a 100% programmable, AI-powered LED lighting solution that dynamically recreates, modulates, and perfects the full spectrum of the Sun’s natural light in real-time. This type of lighting brings a new level of adaptability and growing success now and in the future.
A dynamic LED grow light solution allows growers to cultivate various crops by recreating the optimal light conditions for each crop and cultivar. Whether growing an assortment of crops or transitioning to a different crop, implementing 100% programmable and fully dynamic lighting with real-time dimming will ensure plants get the appropriate amount and type of light to thrive.
Different crops have different lighting requirements as it relates to photoperiod, spectrum and light intensity, which can make it difficult to change crops and still get the most of the greenhouse. Crop changes are a reality of the greenhouse industry due to market influences and pest/disease cycles. For example, rugose in tomatoes requires removal of the infected crop, thorough disinfection and often a complete crop change to plants such as cucumbers or peppers. Greenhouse growers can address these challenges by transitioning to dynamic lighting and adapting their lighting parameters to the new crop’s specific requirements.
The demand for fresh, locally grown fruit is causing a strawberry frenzy in the produce industry. Greenhouses enable year-round local production and can be key to providing a steady supply of strawberries to the market when local field strawberries are not in season. Growers across North America and globally are adjusting their systems to produce strawberries, whose lighting needs differ from those of vine crops.
Strawberries benefit from far-red light to prevent leaf stacking and improve canopy aeration, especially in the first months of production. Other plants, such as winter peppers, benefit from far-red light mid-season to prevent pepper stacking. Far-red light stretches the nodes and facilitates crop work in snacking cucumbers, while also shortening the time between transplanting and harvesting. Transitioning to dynamic lighting allows growers to create and revise lighting zones at any point, ensuring that each plant is receiving the ideal lighting conditions. This can help growers manage different crops and cultivars. By understanding and utilizing specific lighting for different crops, growers can quickly adapt to challenges to attain peak productivity and improve ROI.
A dynamic LED grow light solution allows growers to fine-tune their lighting strategy for each cultivar, providing the exact amount of light each plant needs to grow without wasting energy on plants that don’t need it. Correct lighting for each crop allows to reduce energy costs and improve the overall health of your crops.
Fine-tuning the strategy according to cultivar is an essential aspect of greenhouse farming, as lighting responses are notoriously cultivar-specific. For example, some lettuce cultivars grow best with a daily light integral of 16-17 mol/m2/day, while others can handle 20 mol/m2/day. The light spectrum can also affect pigmentation, with yellow and orange peppers susceptible to bronzing under high light intensities and high blue levels. On the other hand, high light intensities and high blue light levels can enhance the leaf coloration in red-leafed lettuce, whereas the opposite can produce a less saturated leaf color.
Each plant species and cultivar has unique morphological and physiological characteristics that influence their response to light. These characteristics include the type and number of photoreceptors, the size and shape of leaves, and the efficiency of photosynthetic pathways. Some cultivars can have a greater number of photoreceptors, increasing their sensitivity to light and enabling them to use light more efficiently. Furthermore, the specific light intensity, duration, and spectrum requirements can vary significantly between cultivars, affecting the crop’s overall growth, development, and quality. To produce optimal yields and quality standards per cultivar, different lighting parameters are required per cultivar as it relates to spectrum, intensity and photoperiod.
Dynamic lighting allows growers to create distinct lighting zones to apply optimum lighting conditions for each crop or variety. Specific lighting zones can be positioned over yellow and orange pepper varieties to prevent bronzing. Similarly, the greenhouse lighting can address red-leafed and green-leafed lettuce varieties and/or according to the optimal DLI. The best part is that these lighting strategies are not set in stone at the start of the season and are changeable via Sollum’s SUN as a Service® (SUNaaS) cloud platform. Sollum’s cloud-based system provides a simple drag-and-drop user interface and access to light recipes to facilitate zone management.
In vine crops, cultivars are often described as predominantly vegetative or generative. When the plant is out of balance, growers can adjust the zoning, photoperiod, and spectrum to help bring the plants back into balance. For example, Sollum has worked with multiple growers to increase stem diameter when the head of the crop gets too leggy by temporarily increasing the blue light levels.
In summary, the lighting responses of plants are cultivar-specific, as each plant variety has unique morphological and physiological characteristics affecting how it uses light for growth and development. Growers can fine-tune cultivars’ lighting strategy according to their optimum growth requirements, promoting crops’ overall health and productivity and the fluidity of changing market conditions and pest/disease cycles.
A dynamic LED grow light solution can help keep plants at peak productivity, AI-powered lighting allows to provide the exact amount of light and specific spectrum each variety needs to grow.
A dynamic LED light solution allows greenhouse growers to maintain the productivity of their plants at peak levels. You can adjust your fixtures’ intensity based on the greenhouse’s ambient light levels or allow the rectification to automatically dim, maintaining stable levels at the head of the crop. This is different from traditional lighting systems that dim to pre-set levels when natural light reaches a certain threshold.
Dynamic lighting has been shown to impact peak productivity in crop production significantly. It allows for control over the light intensity and spectrum, improving plant growth and health, increasing yields, and produce quality.
A fully programmable LED grow light solution provides agronomists with a flexible and effective tool to maintain peak productivity in their crop production by controlling and optimizing the light environment for their plants.