LED can save you tomato cost!

We hardly pay any attention to the issue of deteriorating food quality unless we find that musty smell or taste in our plate. The average tomato in subcontinents is shipped almost 1,500 miles from warmer climates where they’re grown to cooler climates that cannot produce the fruit cost-effectively in the winter. This journey is quite costly — tomatoes in general are picked green and ripen during shipping, needless to explaining the time duration deteriorates not just the quality but the flavor. The lengthy shipping distance also adds to the industry’s carbon footprint and above all this process of increases the real cost of the food in folds.

Professor of horticulture from Purdue University says “It makes it really hard for the greenhouse industry to grow tomatoes well in the off-season,” and researchers and his team mates are  trying to change that and make it affordable.

Energy costs drive up prices for producers who might want to grow tomatoes in greenhouses in states that have winters inhospitable to growing food. Greenhouses must be heated, and shorter, overcast days require costly lighting.

It was an experiment that resulted in a a great break through. Conducted with light-emitting diodes, which are cooler and require far less energy than traditional high-pressure sodium lamps used in greenhouses. Using the same yield—size and number of fruit—with high-pressure sodium lamps and LED towers, but the LEDs used about 25 percent of the energy of traditional lamps.

The method could have other advantages as well, because cooler LEDs can be placed much closer and along the sides of plants, lighting not only the top, but also the understory.

“The leaves are photosynthesizing on the lower parts of the plants, and that may be helping with the plant’s energy,” explained a researcher. The researchers are able to get it nearer to the plants without actually harming or scorching them because even the high intensity of the LEDs is not hot like a high-pressure sodium lamp.

The heat from high-pressure sodium lamps account for about 15 to 25 percent of the heat needed to warm greenhouses, but that's still inefficient and also not cost effective at all to heat the green house.

The goal of the research is to reduce prices to the point where local growers could compete with the prices of tomatoes that are shipped from faraway places. Local tomatoes would be harvested vine ripe, would taste better, and would boost local economies.