"LED REVOLUTION" AND NEW OPPORTUNITIES TO IMPROVE THE EFFICIENCY OF PLANT LIGHT CULTURE

Abstract

An analysis of radical developments in the greenhouse crop production in Russia is presented; it is based both on the increase of horticultural lighting technologies application and LED systems implementation. The latter resulted in the transformation of our basic ideas about the possibilities of artificial lighting in the industrial greenhouses and triggered creation of the new generation of vertical farming systems for the controlled environment agriculture. The advantages of LEDs application were studied in the series of photobiological experiments; as the result, the light protocols for the lettuce and sweet basil plants production were developed for the first time. The approved original methodology of such studies can be used to solve similar problems of optimal cultivation in other crops. The article also reports on the development of metrological base for LED plant artificial lighting. The necessary measures to accelerate the mass implementation of LED systems in modern greenhouses with horticultural lighting are suggested.