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A USDA grant will help Cary Mitchell study LED lighting use in greenhouses. (Purdue Agricultural Communication photo/Tom Campbell)
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U.S. Department of Agriculture representatives toured Purdue University
greenhouses on Monday (Oct. 25, 2010) to get a preview of the work that
will come from a $4.88 million grant for LED lighting research.
Cary Mitchell, a professor of horticulture and project director for the
grant, said Purdue researchers will collaborate with Rutgers
University, the University
of Arizona, Michigan State
University, and Orbital
Technologies Corp. on the four-year project to improve and evaluate LED
lighting for greenhouse use. The goal is to increase greenhouse yields and decrease
producers' energy costs.
"The high-intensity discharge lamps used today are inefficient. When
you have acres and acres of greenhouses with these lamps in them, it really
adds up," Mitchell said. "With LED lighting, we should be able to do
as well or better with much less energy."
The USDA Specialty Crops Research Initiative Award will include $2.44
million from the USDA and an equal amount of in-kind contributions of equipment
and services from industry partners. The project is titled "Developing LED
Lighting Technology and Practices for Sustainable Specialty-Crop
Production."
USDA officials, including Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan,
toured greenhouses with prototype LED lights like the ones that will be
used in the research.
"The specialty crop industry plays an enormously important part in
American agriculture and is valued at approximately $50 billion every year,”
Merrigan said. “These projects will be key to providing specialty crop
producers with the information and tools they need to successfully grow,
process, and market safe and high-quality products."
Mitchell's work will include testing LED lighting on high-wire tomatoes.
Those plants can grow taller than 20 ft, and traditional overhead lighting
doesn't reach the lower parts of many plants. Mitchell believes that using LED
lights on the sides of plants will increase photosynthesis and flowering,
improving yield.
Roberto Lopez, an assistant professor of horticulture, will work with about
20 species of bedding plants to test LED lighting's ability to lower the cost
of establishing new plants from cuttings and seeds. Low winter light means
growers currently have to use more expensive overhead lighting to establish new
plants.
John Burr, a lecturer in Purdue's Krannert School of Management, will
evaluate the costs and benefits associated with LED lighting.
A.J Both at Rutgers will be responsible for
developing best practices and standards for testing commercial LED lighting.
Chieri Kubota at the University of Arizona will test the best wavelengths and colors for
LED lighting to establish vegetable transplants, and Erik Runkle at Michigan State will test flower initiation of
ornamental crops with different colors of LEDs, as well as performing project
outreach.
The researchers are partnering with Robert Morrow and C. Michael Bourget of
Orbital Technologies Corp. of Madison, Wisc., which will build the LED lights.
Later phases of the research will include evaluating LED lighting in
commercial settings and developing improved LED lights that match the needs
determined from those tests.
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