Growing crops inside can be a lot trickier than one could imagine.  Farmers need to consider time of the year, type of crops and how many hours of available sunlight.  One can argue that if you supply water and food for the plants and the light that comes through their window is sufficient, may be for some of the indoor plants but think is that sufficient if you are growing plants in huge green houses under controlled environment.

With the improved and growing portion of the greenhouse food production systems, this kind of setting requires at-least six hours of full spectrum sunlight and places where you can’t get the required full spectrum sunlight, it can be supplemented with artificial lights.  This artificial light can be high intensity lights that would promote crop growth and its yield.  There is advantage of using this, which would extend the growing season and boost yields and can serve both commercial interests as well as shortage of food.

The choice of artificial lighting depends on the output spectrum that is similar or closer to that off sunlight and also more importantly the time of the growth cycle (budding, flowering, seeding etc.)

Some of the commonly used lighting equipment coupled with photoperiod control systems that turns on the light for specific period as well as the intensity of the light that supplements the sun light.

High Pressure Sodium Vapor Lamp provides more of orange and red light and appear golden white to naked eye.  This orange and red light are known to be very good during budding and flowering time of the growth cycle.  These fixtures are much efficient than the incandescent bulbs and work in conjunction with natural light.  The energy efficiency makes them good option and are known to have 10% increase in intensity as well as the photosynthetically active radiation.

Ceramic Metal Halide lamps are 3 to 5 times efficient than incandescent lamps and emit more of blue light and have average life span of 8,000 to 15,000 hours.  Studies have shown that use of this during the early phase of plants life, that is during the seeds to germination period.   These lamps coupled with dimmers allows growers to set the perfect lighting for the growth of the plants.

Fluorescent lamps are very popular among the greenhouse operators as they are more energy efficient than that of Sodium Vapor lamps as well as Ceramic metal halide lamp.  They tend to offer wide variety of spectrum that manufacturers can produce them.   The Grow lights typically offers spectrum that are more suitable for the plants chlorophyll absorption range, this enables the plant to grow much more efficiently and reduce the energy burden on the greenhouses.

With the recent advancement in LED lighting, they offer long lasting options with typical life of 50,000 hours.  Also, the LED offers huge energy saving options up to 70% compared to the HID lighting.  Considering the long life and energy savings they offer huge benefit for the greenhouse growers.  With development of phosphors the LEDs will soon be offering the spectral turning options that will be similar to the Linear fluorescent lamps.

Finally, with so many available options that are tailored to different types of plants and various stags of growth, one might need to have to get expert guidance to install the lighting options that suits to the conditions.