Study shows 14% increase in tomato yields with interlighting

Added on 01 June 2022

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Holland's Wageningen University & Research uses a mix of GE Current LED fixtures above and within the crop. The result: More tomatoes, same flavor.

A study by a Dutch university has shown that placing about a third of a greenhouse's LED grow lights among high wire tomato crops rather than suspending all of them above the vines can increase the yield, according to lighting company GE Current, which supplied the fixtures.

Wageningen University & Research (WUR) compared the growth of about 20 trusses of two tomato varieties with another 20 trusses of the same two cultivars Marinice and Santiana.

Researchers grew each over the same five month period, applying the same light intensity, duration, and red-heavy spectral content to both. It also kept other growing conditions such as water, nutrition, ambient temperature, and CO₂ levels the same.

But in one group it used only toplights. In the other, it used 66% toplights while mounting the remaining 34% of the LED fixtures among mature leaves.

The tomatoes in the mixed-height lighting scheme "produced an average of 14% more fruit," GE Current reported, while also noting that the two different groups exhibited no difference in quality or taste, as they both registered similar acidity and Brix (sugar) levels.