Horticultural Lighting Conference Europe plays to a full house in Eindhoven

The second Horticultural Lighting Conference took place earlier this week in Eindhoven, the Netherlands presented by the PennWell LED & Lighting Network of which LEDs Magazine is a part. A new generation of farming operations is leaning toward LEDs for horticultural lighting, but suppliers and growers alike still need to learn and work together to ensure quality products generate quality produce. Attendees at this week’s Horticultural Lighting Conference were treated to solid science on the art of influencing plants with customized light spectra, a comparison of high-pressure sodium (HPS) lamps to LED products and the appropriate metrics for determining horticultural lighting performance, light-distribution techniques for high-value crops, and more.

Like our Chicago event in October 2016, the European conference was a great success. The Eindhoven event featured a full house of more than 200 growers, suppliers, and manufacturers — all with a shared interest in the horticultural application for LED lighting — that gathered at the High Tech Campus. Eleven individual speakers and several panel discussions filled the full-day educational program. In addition 16 sponsors demonstrated their horticultural solid-state lighting (SSL) technology.

The website Horti Daily has posted excellent coverage of the Eindhoven conference. The article summarizes the progress that has been made in LED-based horticultural lighting and the challenges that remain. You will find reporting on a number of the speakers from universities, research laboratories, and SSL manufacturers. Moreover, don’t miss the link to the photo gallery from the event on the article page at Horti Daily.

And we are already planning our next US event for Denver on October 17 of this year where Steve Newman of Colorado State University will deliver the keynote presentation. Newman is the CSU Greenhouse Crops Extension specialist and professor of floriculture, teaching greenhouse management courses that include studies on environmental controls and technologies for commercial growing. Feel free to send a pitch if you have an idea for a presentation.