Many people shopping for LED grow lights are curious as to xtures

lumen output. And while this question perhaps makes sense when
shopping for white lights, when it comes to grow lights, lumens are an
inappropriate metric and shouldnt be considered.
Why is this? The human eye is more sensitive to some colors than
it is to others. To account for this variation, scientists measure light
that humans see in lumens, which takes the amount of radiation
(in watts) that is present and adjusts it to the human eyes sensitivity.
Plants, however, use light from a different part of the spectrum not
the part that is measured in lumens.
Lets look at the light spectrum with a curve showing what humans
see:
As you can see, the human eye is more sensitive to green and yellow
than to blue and red. Five watts of green light has more lumens (ap-
pears brighter) than ve watts of red light.
Lumens Arent an Important Measure
of Grow Light Effectiveness
White Paper n Illumitex
Illumitex, Inc. n5307 Industrial Oaks Blvd. n Austin, TX 78735 n 512- 279-5030 n www.illumitex.com
Now, lets look at what plants see:
Plants clearly use light from different parts of the spectrum than what
humans use. The human eye response discounts red and blue light,
while the action spectrum clearly shows that plants are receptive down
to 400nm and 700nm. As we mentioned above, lumens are weight-
ed to measure light that humans see, and this light isnt particularly
useful to plant growth. Lumens, therefore, are not good indicators of
expected total production.
A better indicator is PPFD. According to fundamental laws of photobi-
ology, one photon creates one reaction. Therefore, a true measurement
of total plant production is how many photons hit the plant leaves.
Photosynthetic photon ux (PPF) is a direct measure of total photons
emitted from the sources, and photosynthetic photon ux density
(PPFD) is a measure of the amount of photons hitting the canopy. PPFD,
therefore, is a true measure of the light hitting the plant canopy.
Illumitex optimizes both the spectral emission of the source and the
PPFD at the plant canopy. Illumitex created the F3 spectrum to specif-
ically address the plants photosynthetic response while minimizing
electrical losses, and using the least energy possible. Our light delivers
more biomass for less wattage, than anyone else.
To measure PPFD, use our PPFD calculator: http://www.illumitex.com/
les/ppfd-calc.php

Lumens are for Humans
Case Study
White Paper n Illumitex
Illumitex, Inc. n 5307 Industrial Oaks Blvd. n Austin, TX 78735 n 512- 279-5030 n www.illumitex.com
More Resources
http://www.illumitex.
com/video-lumens-vs-
ppfd/
http://www.illumitex.
com/ppfd-growers-
best-friend/