Going Green – Lighting Designing for Horticulture
Synopsis
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng. (Ret.), FIES
The future of food security in Canada is in greenhouses and vertical farms – controlled environments where unseasonable weather is not a concern. There are 17 million square meters of greenhouses in Ontario alone, where supplemental electric lighting at up to 50 watts per square meter provide ample opportunities for horticultural lighting design.
The challenge for professional lighting designers is to effectively communicate with the client, including horticulturalists, farmers, and greenhouse and vertical farm operators. Concepts such as photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD), photoperiods, long- and short-day plants, and daily light integrals (DLI) are easy to master, but there is much more. Photomorphogenesis, phototropism, shade avoidance, secondary metabolites, and circadian rhythms are dependent on ultraviolet radiation and visible light from 280 to 800 nm.
Date and time to be announced.