The power of LEDs and plant growth.

[Brian_Nano12g]

Interesting article. Not directly related to planted tanks per se. But the principles of efficiency, effectiveness, and the future of LEDs in plant growth lighting are starkly similar to that of our hobby.

Lettuce See the Future: Japanese Farmer Builds High-Tech Indoor Veggie Factory - GE Reports

I wonder what type of new LED GE came up with, spectrum-wise?

 

[Dallascowboys16]

I bet they are trying to simulate natural sunlight with those LEDs. the LEDs we use are not at all like natural sunlight. Can always improve something.

 

[Plantaholic]

That's pretty fascinating, at first I was thinking why waste the energy when the sun is free. But at the accelerated grow/waste rate, and using that much less water, that's pretty cool.


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[Delapool]

Cool idea. The only trouble with these (or at least on the smaller scale green house over here for the tomatoes) is that any disease will rip through the system. Otherwise great product.

 

[Brian_Nano12g]

Good point. But on the flip side of the coin, by keeping the enclosed controlled environment pest free, there would be no need for pesticides.

 

[Delapool]

True, it was a pretty enclosed system. Definitely tasted nice.

 

[Sk3lly]

Amazing. Some very clever forward thinking people out there

With how little water usage, this would work great in places like Africa where crops are very hard to grow. Except some corrupt government official would probably get his grubby hands all over it and ruin it. Nevermind

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[Fishperson]

This really is a great idea because everything can be regulated so much more easily. Humidity, temperature, light intensity, all at the touch of a button. If any of you have read a book called The Omnivore's Dilemma (if you haven't you should) then you really get how inefficient farms are these days. Or most farms at least.

 

[Mebbid]

I did some looking around for information on this and the numbers are really really impressive on this.

Organic lettuce is expecting to produce 16500 heads per acre per harvest.

You can get roughly 4 harvests depending on weather. Assuming there are 4 harvests that gives us 66000 heads of lettuce per acre per year

The indoor system at approx. .75 acres is doing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day.

Over 1 year:
Traditional farming - 66,000 heads of lettuce
Factory farming - 3,650,000 heads of lettuce

That's an absurd difference. I honestly believe this is the solution to soooooo many of the worlds problems now and in the future.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[bud29]

Cool - that idea definitely seems to be picking up, I saw something about "pinkhouses" like these some time last year I believe Vertical 'Pinkhouses:' The Future Of Urban Farming? : The Salt : NPR