Greenhouses & Equipment
Lighting
Explore our Lighting products
Do I need extra light?
Here at CropKing we understand how important adequate lighting is for the quality of your plant growth. Depending on your situation you may want to evaluate utilizing supplemental lighting to enhance growth. Important concepts to understand when evaluating a horticultural lighting product are PAR, PPFD, and DLI as these have a direct impact on your crop's success; however, it's also important to consider your supplemental light's intensity, duration, quality, spectrum, distance, type of light relative to your specific plant's requirements.
PAR - Photosynthetic Active Radiation, is the wavelength of light in the range of 400 nm to 700 nm that plants are most efficient at performing photosynthesis. This is different than lumens which is the unit traditionally associated with brightness, plants reflect mostly green light but they can efficiently use red and blue lights in photosynthesis.
PPFD - Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density, measures the amount of PAR that arrives at a plant each second.
DLI - Daily Light Integral, amount of PPFD received each day as a function of light intensity and duration.
In order to evaluate your lighting situation, we recommend you calculate the DLI seen by your plants to determine whether or not your plants will require more lighting. Depending on your environment, budget and goals, we can help you source a lighting solution that meets your needs from a variety of commercially available Fluorescent or HID lights from a range of horticultural lighting vendors.
Relative Photosynthetic Efficiency plotted against wavelength spectrum with Lumen and PAR values superimposed.
DLI Map of Continental United States.
If you don’t find the answers to your questions on our website, please contact us and we will be more than happy to assist you. The CropKing team of horticulturists and technical experts is available, whether you’re looking to learn more about hydroponics or need greenhouse equipment or growing supplies.