how do LED grow lights replicate the sun when growing plants . how does photosynthesis and respiration happen?
In: Biology
Photosynthesis is just a chemical reaction (or more accurately, a super complicated chain of chemical reactions) that get activated when certain chemicals absorb certain frequencies of light.
We can manufacture LEDs that send out those frequencies of light, so they trigger the reactions, allowing plants to photosynthesize.
An LED grow light is actually a panel of lots of little lights, and each of these lights has its own specific color, or wavelength. The best grow lights are the ones that make the wavelengths that your particular type of plant needs most, in the amounts that it needs them. This may or may not be exactly the same as full spectrum sunlight.
Photosynthesis is a complicated process, but basically it’s the plant using the energy of light in certain wavelengths to turn water and carbon dioxide into food for growth and development, with oxygen released as a byproduct. Using nutrients from the soil, the plant makes a chemical called chlorophyll which makes this process possible.
Respiration means breathing, which plants do just like us, except with leaves instead of lungs, and in the opposite way — they inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen, instead of the other way around.
The plants doesnt care where the photons come from but they have grown familiar with certain frequencies/amounts/wavelengths
Plants get energy by eating the sun’s light. The sun’s light is made up of a lot of different colors mixed together, but plants can only eat certain colors of light.
LED grow lights are made of a bunch of tiny lights in different colors but only in the colors that plants can eat. Because of that they don’t waste energy on making light the plant can’t use but the plants still get to eat all the light they want to.
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