PDR Group to Distribute LED Horticultural Lighting Products in India

"This partnership will create a large number of new opportunities in untapped areas for LumiGrow in India," said Neil Coppinger, vice president of sales, LumiGrow. He continued, "Carefully selecting high-quality partners such as PDR Group enables LumiGrow to provide lighting solutions with unprecedented power and energy efficiency to growers everywhere.""The greatest economic opportunity for growers is improving crop productivity," commented Sanjog Lunkad, director, PDR Group. "We're pleased to add the LumiGrow solution to our grower offering because it delivers the productivity gains of conventional greenhouse lighting with half the energy use," he added.
Growers in India are switching from open-field farming to controlled indoor environments to achieve greater crop yields that will meet the needs of a growing population, according to the Horticulture Training Centre. Agriculture in India has the potential for major productivity gains because crop yields in India are 30 percent to 60 percent of the best sustainable crop yields achieved in farms worldwide, according to research from Oklahoma State University.The LumiGrow product line is independently proven to improve crop yields and reduce energy consumption and costs by half compared to conventional lighting. Growers also conserve strained water supplies because plants grown with comparatively cool LumiGrow LED lights show lower transpiration rates than plants grown either in open fields or with conventional greenhouse lighting.
LED retrofit bulbs are considered by many as the heir apparent to incandescent and compact fluorescent lamps, due to their superior energy efficiency and long life. Key barriers to mass adoption have been higher cost and, like compact fluorescent lights (CFL), poor dimmer compatibility and color quality. The challenge posed by color quality improvements represents a significant opportunity for solid-state lighting (SSL) technology, given that consumers are largely dissatisfied with the color quality performance of existing CFLs. Improved color quality is a fundamental advantage for LEDs due to their more uniform optical characteristics. As a result, SSL products can more closely replicate the user experience of incandescent lighting by simultaneously delivering warm correlated color temperature (CCT) with high Color Rendering Index (CRI).