Intermittent Light from a Rotating High-pressure Sodium Lamp Promotes Flowering of Long-day Plants

A technology for long-day (LD) lighting was evaluated for commercial production of ornamentals using a stationary high-pressure sodium (HPS) lamp with an oscillating aluminum parabolic reflector (rotating HPS lamp). We performed an experiment with four LD species (Campanula carpatica Jacq., Coreopsis grandiflora Hogg ex Sweet, Petunia ×hybrida Vilm.-Andr., and Rudbeckia hirta L.) to compare the efficacy of a rotating HPS lamp in promoting flowering with night-interruption (NI) lighting using incandescent (INC) lamps. Seedlings were grown under natural short-day (SD) photoperiods (12 h or less) and NI treatments were delivered from a 600-W rotating HPS lamp mounted at one gable end of the greenhouse or from INC lamps that were illuminated continuously for 4 h or cyclically for 6 min every 30 min for 4 h. Plants were grown at lateral distances of 1, 4, 7, 10, or 13 m from the rotating HPS lamp, which provided a maximum photosynthetic photon flux of 25.4 μmol·m−2·s−1 (at 1 m) to 0.3 μmol·m−2·s−1 (at 13 m). Control plants were grown under an uninterrupted 15-h skotoperiod. Within 16 weeks, 80% or greater of the plants within each species that received NI lighting had a macroscopic visible flower bud or inflorescence, whereas all species but Petunia ×hybrida remained vegetative under the SD. Flowering of all species grown at 13 m from the rotating HPS lamp was delayed by 14 to 31 d compared with those under continuous INC. The weekly operational costs to provide NI lighting to a 139-m2 greenhouse with one 600-W rotating HPS lamp or a standard cyclic INC lamp installation was estimated to be 80% to 83% lower compared with INC lighting for the entire 4-h NI. These results indicate that a rotating HPS lamp can be used to efficiently deliver LD lighting, but flowering time was delayed and flower number reduced in some species when the maximum NI light intensity was less than 2.4 μmol·m−2·s−1.