Effect of LED Supplemental Illumination on the Growth of Strawberry Plants

Student: Professor:

Outline
I. Introduction II. Experimental III. Results IV.Conclusion

1. Introduction
In the traditional cultivation, fluorescent lamps, metal halide lamps, high pressure sodium lamps and incandescent lamps are generally used, but the main band spectrum of these light sources can not be used by plants, so the promoting effective is not significant. Compared with ordinary lighting, Light emitting diode (LED) has features such as numerous type of wavelength, energy saving, long lifespan, short response time, small size, light weight, less heat, easy to disperse. The spectrum of LED lighting system which used in plant cultivation has superior performance, it is easy to obtain pure monochromatic or composite spectrum. The wavelength is consistent with the absorption spectrum of plant photosynthesis. Using LED we can achieve different light quality, control luminous intensity separately and the energy efficiency is up to 80~90%.

 Nhut et al. reported that the leaf area, petiole length, stem length of strawberry increased significantly which under red LEDs culture environment. Under the culture system of 70% red plus 30% blue LEDs, the strawberrys leaf number, root number, root length, fresh weight and dry weight reached maximum. Guo Shuang-sheng et al. studied on the selection of light source used for plant cultivation, found that the plants various combination s of red and blue LED grew with nearly normal state and the combination of 90% red plus 10% blue LED possessed the best comprehensive indexes. In this work, we investigated the effect of supplemental illumination with different LED combination lighting system on the growth of strawberry plants, in hope to provide the basic data of LED which can be used in plant cultivation and theoretical studies.

II. Experimental
A. LED irradiation device Four LED systems were used, namely: o LED1: 30 W, the red/blue LED ratio is 5:1, o LED2: 60 W. the red/blue LED ratio is 5:1, o LED3: 60 W. the orange/red/blue LED ratio is 3:5:1 o LED4: 120W. the red/blue LED ratio is 5:1. The LED illumination systems were combined with 1 W super-bright blue, orange and red LED in proportion, all of LEDs were evenly arranged on the aluminum PCB circuit board and used constant current source to drive.

 B. Methods - The experiment was conducted from November 2009 to February 2010 in the strawberry greenhouse of Ningbo Yongfeng Landscape Construction. - It include four groups used different LEDs supplemental illumination and one control group (CK) which cultivated under normal condition. - The temperature was controlled at 9 to 19 and the humidity was controlled at 62-66% in the greenhouse. The lighting systems were located at 1 meter above strawberry plants. The supplemental illumination time is 4 hours everyday from 6:00 am to 8:00 am and from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm.

III. RESULTS
A. The spectrum of LED combination illumination system

Figure 1 - Illumination systems with red LED and blue LED in ratio of 5:1.

Figure 2 - The spectrum of the systems with red, orange and blue LED in ratio of 3:2:1

III. RESULTS
A. The spectrum of LED combination illumination system In the process of plant photosynthesis, the main absorption peaks of the chlorophyll a are around 435 nm and 665 nm, the main absorption peaks of chlorophyll b are around 465 nm and 640 nm. It is indicated that the spectrum power distribution of the two LED illumination systems are consistent with the absorption spectrum of chlorophyll, it can be effectively exploited by plant photosynthesis.

III. RESULTS
B. Effect of supplemental illumination on the growth of strawberry plants The growth parameters of strawberry cultivated with different supplemental illumination were shown on Fig. 3 to Fig. 6.

III. RESULTS
B. Effect of supplemental illumination on the growth of strawberry plants

All the parameters with LED supplemental illumination are much higher than that of the control group. It indicates that the LED supplemental illumination can promote the growth of strawberry plants.

III. RESULTS
B. Effect of supplemental illumination on the growth of strawberry plants
In a certain power range, the effect of LED illumination on the growth of strawberry is depended on the irradiation power. The irradiation power of LED2 and LED3 is equal, but the promotion effect of LED3 is better than LED2. This is because the spectrum of LED3 is more similar to the absorption spectrum of plant photosynthesis.

III. RESULTS
B. Effect of supplemental illumination on the growth of strawberry plants

There is no significant difference between control group and four groups used LED supplemental illumination. It is proved that the process of supplement illumination is helpful to the vegetative growth of strawberry plants. The four LED combination systems are suitable for leafy vegetables and ornamental plants cultivation.

IV. Conclusion
Compared with natural light, the LEDs 2 and 3 are more suitable for strawberrys vegetative growth. However, there is no significant impact on the strawberrys flower number and fruit number. It indicate that these four types of LEDs are suitable for the cultivation of leafy vegetables and ornamental plants. The light intensity of LEDs shows the directly impact on the vegetative growth of strawberry. In a certain power range, the promotion of LEDs for the strawberrys vegetative growth is strengthened with irradiation level. Under the same power condition, the LED 3 is more superior than LED 2, which the spectrum is much more close to the absorption spectrum of plant photosynthesis.