Hello Mr. Fi,

What you are trying to build is called a "growth chamber". Conventionally, these are equipped with lights, climate control (temperature and relative humidity), and sometimes gas levels (CO2). LED installations are known to be the best source of PAR for growth chamber experiments, and the only advantage that florescence lamps impart is lower initial cost, but they produce more heat and consume more power than their equivalent LEDs. Generally, heavy cooling is not required for LED lights, however, in a sealed growth chamber, heat will accumulate slowly and need to be vented at least. Both LED and fluorescent lighting are much more efficient than HID lighting such as HPS bulbs.

Note that growers are preferring LED for certain applications, and that most publications involving LED use fluorescent lighting as their control to determine differential effects between the two systems. The articles I have read suggested that the balance between red and blue LED is important (50-50 optimal), and others have suggested that green light has a critical role in photomorphogenesis, or the proper physiological development of the plant.

Large LED companies already have information on the usage for many plants. Check their sites and see if they have the info you need. Otherwise, just ask them; thet might have the info you need also...

the light fluence density in vitro is maintained low for different reasons, in order to comtrol temperature and tissue phenolics build up that contribute to tissue browning and lignin biosynthesis activation. Apart from that, int he perspective of photoautotrophic cultures led arrays are in use and white ones are sold in adhesive strips easy to place  where fluorescent sources like grow-lux were as in.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTRLt-fzTwg , for physiological infos    http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/content/43/7/1951.full

I read a lot of papers with LED vs fluorescence experiments and it's quite chaotic. It turns out that you have to run your own experiment with the plant species you interested in with different ratios of red:blue LEDs.

Because i don't have time now to test different ratios of LEDs on my plants, i will probably use 1:1:1 blue:red:white LED stripes in the grow chamber.

Hi Nick,

1. There are many advantages of using LED as light source for growing plants, which have been mentioned at the above posts. Such as its long lifetime (25,000 hours), use less electric energy, produce less heat, non-toxic, ability to provide different 'light recipe' to different plants..etc. (see attachment from Philips Inc.).

2. But you also need to consider what kind of experiments you are conducting, what is your research goal, if the results generated from your experimental plants growing under LED can be used to explain that growing under fluorescence light or under the sun light, can this product developed under LED light useful for the farmers to grow them under the sunlight in the future. The use of LED might promote/change some kind of reactions in the plants, and will these changes influence the accuracy of your specific project? Research projects to do with light-related/-sensitive molecules such as phytochrome and alike definitely need extra discussion in the lab before you install the LED lamps.