With the continuous development of modern agriculture, the demand and energy consumption of agricultural lighting are expanding, which also puts forward new challenges to the traditional agricultural lighting technology. As a new generation of light source, in addition to the characteristics of environmental protection and energy saving, compared with artificial light sources such as fluorescent lamps or high-pressure sodium lamps commonly used in traditional agricultural fields, LED has the characteristics of adjustable light quantity, adjustable light quality, low cooling load and allowing to increase the cultivation amount per unit area, so it has great application value. It can be predicted that the application of LED will bring more innovation to agriculture.

"With the continuous development of modern agriculture, the demand for agricultural lighting is expanding, followed by a significant increase in power consumption. This not only challenges the technology of traditional agricultural lighting lamps, but also provides a very good opportunity for the development and application of new agricultural lighting lamps." Ruan Jun, Executive Deputy Secretary General of the national semiconductor lighting engineering R & D and Industry Alliance, said.

Led agricultural lighting is a "niche" market

In Dr. Ruan Jun's view, the development of LED lighting technology has been more mature than before in the past two years, and it has also begun to gradually introduce agricultural lighting applications. Plant factories that use the characteristics of LED light source and environmental control have become a "niche" market that major manufacturers urgently want to enter in recent years. In such a market, enterprises choose a small product or service field, concentrate on entering and becoming a leader, and establish various barriers, which is expected to form a lasting competitive advantage.

Ruan Jun believes that the market potential of LED light source in the field of agriculture is huge. "First of all, based on the huge demand for agricultural lighting, taking greenhouse lighting as an example, lighting facilities are the basic and necessary components of modern glass greenhouses. At present, China has 35000 hectares of glass greenhouses, while the total area of global glass greenhouses has reached 49000 hectares."

In fact, the combination of LED lighting and modern agriculture can bring multiple benefits. It can shorten the harvest period of crops, plants or flowers. Coupled with appropriate environmental control, it can not only prevent pests, but also avoid or reduce the use of pesticides, so as to ensure food safety and improve the added value of agricultural products.

Forward looking technology is an investment for the future

In Ruan Jun's view, although China's LED industry has initially formed a relatively complete industrial chain, at present, among the enterprises producing LED agricultural lighting lamps, small and medium-sized enterprises producing medium and low-end products account for the majority, lack of core independent intellectual property rights and systematic research, and few leading enterprise groups can participate in international competition. Agricultural lighting enterprises are not the same, and there are still no good and bad LED products of the same scale. In such a market pattern, enterprises with core independent intellectual property rights are more valuable.

From the perspective of policy, the state has gradually increased its attention to the production and application of led plants. For example, during the Eleventh Five Year Plan period, a project was established through the 863 plan, and several LED agricultural scientific research projects were supported during the 12th Five Year Plan period.

"At present, a major factor in the application of idle LED light source agricultural lighting is the cost." Ruan Jun said. Nevertheless, Ruan Jun believes that referring to the annual decline of 20% - 30% in the price of LED light source in recent years, with the improvement of technical maturity and the expansion of application scale, and taking into account the gradual increase of government support and subsidies in R & D and sales, the cost will be closer and closer to the traditional light source. Moreover, due to the obvious advantages of LED light source compared with traditional light source, it is still a very forward-looking technology in China, with huge growth space for application and promotion, which is an investment in line with the future industrial trend. (editor in charge: Flora)