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The 2012 ASHS Annual Conference

9377:
Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs) As a Sustainable Alternative for Lighting Greenhouse-grown Tomatoes

Friday, August 3, 2012: 1:30 PM
Dupont
Celina Gomez, Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
Cary A. Mitchell, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
Optimal year-round production of greenhouse-grown tomatoes requires the use of supplemental light to complement natural solar radiation in light-limited environments. Electric lighting accounts for a significant percentage of total greenhouse energy costs. Thus, a greenhouse tomato-production experiment was conducted from winter to summer to compare growth, yield, and fruit biomass production per kW-h of energy consumed for two tomato cultivars grown with no supplemental lighting, under overhead high-pressure sodium (HPS) lamps, or with intracanopy LEDs (95% red and 5% blue). An increasing solar daily light integral (DLI) occurred naturally for all treatments, and a constant DLI of 9 mol·m-2·day-1 was provided to the HPS and LEDs treatments. Results from this experiment will be presented. This project is supported in part by NIFA SCRI grant 2010-51181-21369.