GLASE has published a review of horticulture lighting system performance, including recommendations for both the lighting standards community and growers for navigating the complex and rapidly evolving horticulture lighting ecosystem.
This work was performed by Cornell University and Rutgers University, members of the GLASE horticulture lighting consortium, of which RPI and LESA are founding members.
"Recent advances in light emitting diode (LED) technology have provided exciting opportunities for plant lighting applications, and it is expected that LED lighting will soon overtake the still common use of high-intensity discharge (HID) lighting technology. Because LED lighting offers novel capabilities, extensive research is needed to identify optimal lighting practices for the large number of crops grown by commercial greenhouse growers," the team says. "Plant scientists and growers facing decisions about plant lighting systems do not always have sufficient information about lamp performance characteristics."
In this paper, they reported on various technical performance characteristics for 18 lamp types commonly used for plant production, and compared these characteristics with the characteristics of sunlight. "The results showed a substantial range of performance characteristics, highlighting the importance of a careful assessment before selecting a light source for horticultural applications. The data presented in this paper can be used to assess the suitability of a specific light source for a particular horticultural application."
Timothy J. Shelford and Arend-Jan Both’s paper “On the Technical Performance Characteristics of Horticultural Lamps”