Red Sun Farms, a grower-shipper-exporter of greenhouse-grown vegetables, will evaluate the efficacy of Sollum Technologies’ far-red lighting on plant behaviors and growth patterns.
Far-red light is part of the light spectrum, beyond visible red light, that can influence plant behaviors. Sollum, a provider of LED lighting solutions, said Red Sun Farms will trial its smart LED grow light figures and its “SUN as a Service” cloud-based platform to adjust light spectra to plant growth stages.
Red Sun will evaluate Sollum’s solutions against traditional fixed-spectrum lighting, according to a news release. The grower said it will measure crop yield, quality and growth efficiency in both growing conditions.
Red Sun Farms grows 21.5 acres of different tomato varieties and 6 acres of mini cucumbers under LED lights, the release said.
“We are excited to partner with Sollum on this trial as we are on the cusp of expanding our facility and looking for the best LED lighting solution available to grow efficiently and sustainably,” Sarah Lombardi, general manager of Red Sun Farms, said in the release. “Our research and development projects are an essential part of our success as a greenhouse producer.”
Lombardi said research shows changing the red-to-far-red ratio in supplemental lighting can impact plant morphology.
“We want to see those impacts for ourselves in our own greenhouse,” she said. “While other lighting solutions allow us to look at the effects of including far-red in fixed spectrum LEDs, Sollum’s solution gives us the additional capabilities of observing how dynamically changing that ratio over time might provide added benefits to our crops.”
Lombardi also said adjusting the lighting intensity saves the farm electricity.
“Many studies have been and are currently being conducted on the benefits of manipulating the red to-far-red ratio for crop yield, harvest time, fruit production and many other growth indicators,” Rose Séguinxf, an agronomist for Sollum Technologies, said in the release. “These research studies are often finding that the positive impacts of adding far-red are timing dependent ― i.e., it should be added at a higher ratio during specific times of the day or specific growth stages in order to produce the desired result.”
