Anoectochilus roxburghii is a wild edible species and has been traditionally used for a wide range of diseases in many countries. Our research aims to find the optimal light-emitting diode (LED) lighting conditions to improve the growth and development of A. roxburghii seedling at the acclimation stage. Two-month-old explants were cultured under the various lighting conditions including red (R), blue (B), BR (one blue: four red), BRW151 (one blue: five red: one white), BRW142 (one blue: four red: two white), and fluorescent lamp (FL). The results showed that the lighting conditions not only affect the growth and morphology of plants but also the accumulation of total flavonoids. Single wavelengths (B or R LED) inhibited the growth and secondary biosynthesis of A. roxburghii, while the BR LED showed an enhancement in both growth and biomass accumulation. A. roxburghii plants were grown under BR LED light has average plant height (7.18 cm), stem diameter (17.6mm), number of leaves (5.78 leaves/tree), leaf area (4.67 cm²), fresh weight (0.459 g/tree), dry matter percentages (11.69%), and total flavonoid (1.811 mg/g FW) is considered to be superior to FL lamps and other LEDs in the experiment. This indicates that both blue and red wavelengths are required for the normal growth of A. roxburghii. To learn more about how light affects flavonoid biosynthesis, we evaluated the expression of genes involved in this process (pal, chs, chi, and fls) and found that BR LED light enhances the expression level of chi and fls genes compared to fluorescent lamps (1.18 and 1.21 times, respectively), leading to an increase in the flavonoid content of plant. Therefore, applying BR LED during in vitro propagation of A. roxburghii could be a feasible way to improve the medicinal value of this plant.

Redistribution of LED radiation in lighting is necessary in many applications. In this article, we propose a new optical component design for LED lighting to achieve a higher performance. The design consists of a commercial collimator and two linear Fresnel lenses. The LED radiation is collimated by a collimator and redistributed by double linear Fresnel lenses to create a square-shaped, uniform distribution. The linear Fresnel lenses design is based on Snell’s law and the “edge-ray principle”. The optical devices are made from poly methyl methacrylate (PMMA) using a high-speed computer numerical control (CNC) machine. The LED prototypes with complementary optics were measured, and the optical intensity distribution was evaluated. The numerical results showed we obtained a free-form lens that produced an illumination uniformity of 78% with an efficiency of 77%. We used the developed LED light sources for field experiments in agricultural lighting. The figures of these tests showed positive effects with control flowering criteria and advantages of harvested products in comparison with the conventional LED sources. This allows our approach in this paper to be considered as an alternative candidate for highly efficient and energy-saving LED lighting applications.

The environmental impacts of photoluminescence and light-emitting diode (LED) lighting technologies in horticulture are described in this paper. As a case study, the life cycle assessment (LCA) associated with the raw materials, air, water and natural resources of screw-based compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and screw-based horticultural LED lamps (abbreviated as H-LED) used for “night break” effect in chrysanthemum cultivation is considered. Instead of the unit of radiant power of lighting sources (lumens) used in human lighting, the photon flux (micromoles per second) of the plant light is used in this study. The results of the study show that the environmental impacts of the H-LED lighting technology are markedly less than the fluorescent lamps. Therefore, the shift to LED lighting technology in horticulture in general, and “night break” chrysanthemum cultivation in particular, brings about tremendous benefits not only for saving energy and improving crop quality, but also for protecting the air/climate, water, soil and natural resources.