Re: Icemud's Budmaster LED Grow Light Journal - Hybrid LED's & 730nm Far Red Triggeri
Thanks Norcaliwood...
Yea this grow was a test of using Far Red light to "trick" the plant into having a shorter flowering cycle. It did work as intended and I cut 12 days off my harvests of multiple strains, however, with 12 less days of flowering, it also reduced the weight (which was pretty much expected). I do think that far red light may have some use but more has to be experimented with to see if its beneficial or not.
This grow though didn't have to do with lack of spectrrum though as my lights are full spectrum. It was just a test of using far red light for 15 minutes after the normal lights went out
I do agree that plants need a full spectrum though. But the balance of what wavelengths, is still not known completely as there are 2 sides to plant lighting. (how a light drives photosynthesis, and how the plant reacts by photomorphogenics) Photosynthesis is closely related to the Mcree curve however its mainly based on absorbed photons which on the modified mcree curve, most wavelengths are absorbed nearly equal. Green is absorbed slightly less by about 15% but not by much, and at high intensity this actually changes and becomes more efficient than other colors. So when thinking in terms of photosynthesis, there is very little difference between the wavelengths where a completely blue spectrum will keep up with a full spectrum white light, at the same PPFD. However, the morphologiccal effects of the blue spectrum vs the white spectrum will be completely different. We know a lot about the photosynthesis spectrum, but not much about the morphological effects which scientists are still trying to figure out.
So this far red grow I did was the results of testing morphological response. Using UV-B light is also a morphological response which activates a SAR response.