From 2014, we have started to engineer grow lights for various plants, from cannabis, tomatoes, lettuces, strawberries to even seaweeds. The experience in “inventing” something isn’t fun at all, the most challenging part is finding the proper spectrum for different plants.
This is the famous chart we are all familiar with; from which we have learnt the pigments chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b inside of plants absorb blue and red spectrum light most efficiently.
Guided by that theory, from 2015 to 2017 we have built hundreds of LED grow lights with different blue:red ratios and run field testing again and again. The results were very frustrating:
- Sometimes the result was successful; sometimes it failed.
- Sometimes it worked for plant A but failed for plant B.
- It worked one time; but when we repeated the testing, it failed.
- It worked here but failed in a different grow environment.
We also grabbed grow lights, like Philips, Kind LED, Black Dog, from market running field testing, we were not successful. We realized it really depended on how lucky we and plants were. But what we needed was an LED grow light that can universally work anytime with any plant.
From the history of our spectrum development, there are some very helpful findings we have learnt and would like to share:There is no RIGHT or WRONG spectrum, but only PROPER spectrum for specific plant. You must run a lot of field testing to refine your spectrum and find the most optimal spectrum for the plants.
The photosynthesis theory itself is still evolving. Before people completely discover the myths behind the plants’ growth, there is still a very long way before we come up with the final spectrum recipes.
Without the perfect photosynthesis theory, the traditional Chinese medicine approach is practically better than the Western medicine approach.
My salute to all scientists and people who devoted themselves to this industry, please be passionate and keep growing!
