Colour of Light, Wave Energy & DLI

As you know, plants get their energy from light, but you might not know that different color of light and energy levels differ from one side of the spectrum through to the other. Think about the colors of a rainbow. All of these colors are in white light. While using a prism you can separate the white light into individual colour of light and energy levels. (That’s what the raindrops are doing when we see a rainbow.) At the purple, violet & blue end of the scale the light is at its highest energy. It has short wavelengths. The red end is lower energy, it has long wavelengths.

What wavelength Corresponds with a colour?

The shorter the wavelength the more energy a color has. The color you see when you look at an object is the color that the light is reflecting at your eye. Plant leaves (usually) look green to us because they are reflecting the green back. This means that they are not absorbing the green light. They are absorbing the other wavelengths. The ones that give the plant the most energy are the ones at the purple & blue end of the spectrum.

Plants are certain colors because their pigments absorb light most effectively in certain regions of the visual light spectrum. As you know, plants are usually green, which means that most other colors are absorbed. One of the most common pigments is called chlorophyll, and one of the varieties is responsible for the green color of plants; it strongly absorbs purple-UV, blue and red, orange and infra-red-IR light, which leaves only the green light to make it to our eyes.

Plants are certain colors because their pigments absorb light most effectively in certain regions of the visual light spectrum. One of the most common pigments is called chlorophyll, and one of the varieties is responsible for the green color of plants; it strongly absorbs purple-UV, blue, orange, red and infra-red-IR light, which leaves only the green light (low absorption/up to 30% efficacy) to make it to our eyes.

Do I Calculate Colour of Light, Energy and DLI for my operation? How can I optimize?

Many people have various operational goals and innovations, I love to see this come to life with the wonderful clients whom I’ve got to know while implementing solutions leading to their dreams. When we consider aspects of crop type, the environment in which they grow, colours and intensities of beneficial light combinations, energy usage; among others, we begin to establish a goal-oriented implementation strategy. It is a normal to accept that everyone has their own desires and some wish to perform observational testing, for hard data.

Colour of Light, combinations of wave energy vary by colour parameter and intensity for total energy usage. A micromole (by second) or mole (by day) is a term to measure light particles or photons by ‘Colour of Light and Energy Waves’ for grower to easily calculate total Daily Light Integral for their operation. Calculating DLI is one of the most efficient and important things you need to consider when weighing your leaf matter (pun intended). Each plant type has its unique needs when it comes to balanced spectral delivery for it’s entire life cycle, a few calculations will generate estimated coverage of a specific area over a specific amount of time. This leads to operational goals, sometimes setting pace for additional crop cycles to reap the benefit of for the bottom line, more food or profit! More on DLI another day….

NASA continues to test viability of LED grow solutions for high efficiency food growth in space for extraterrestrial colonization. Findings show within NASA studies that plants all have specific needs unique to their own genetics and benefit from necessary multiple colour of light waves blue, yellow, green, orange and red parts of the visible light spectrum. As more technologies and integrations unfold we see that UVB & InfraRed are just slightly outside of the visual colour spectrum. These Colour of Light, Wave Energy are also valuable to promote uptake of secondary waves for metabolization and synthesis leading to cherished optimal growth characteristics as an activation spectrum.