While growing with artificial lighting, how many LEDs per Lettuce head are used and which ones are the best (white, blue, red)?
As far as PPF is considered is 196,8 μmol/m2*s for 16 hours enough?
Can i minimize the hours needed for lighting by maximizing the PPF without hurting the plant? What is the maximum PPF for Lettuce.
Thank you all
Well the number of LEDs don't matter as long as they can provide the needed flux. Which color to use depends on what you think is "best". Generally speaking red light induces stretch growth in plants while blue light induces more stationary types of growth. Lettuce and LED has been studied in a number of papers so, there is enough to go on with...
http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/content/27/5/427.short
If you are on a commercial route, i.e. you want to sell the lettuce I'd suggest to test the light conditions for your particular lettuce variety in detail since light influences plants on a wide variety of levels, unless someone has already done it for your exact variety. For example you could trigger effects in biochemical pathways that ultimately alter the taste of the leaves. The color will have large impact on how the heads look. You definitely will need enough blue to prevent shooting. For photosynthesis energy red is sufficient but the less blue you have the more yellowish your heads will probably look. But there is no way of predicting, you have to test. A few tests with measuring overall morphology and dry weight increase under different light regimes will give you what you are looking for.
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