As usual
@Rocket Soul is on the money.
The UV boards are the original spectrum and were designed as a "true" full-spectrum single-channel (one driver) LED board aimed at providing the best balance between yield and quality without the addition of supplemental lighting. We're not claiming it is the "best" spectrum, but it is well-balanced, with no gaps from 400-780nm, and we know it works. If you buy just one light, we believe the UV boards are hard to beat for alround performance
The High Red boards came about for two reasons. The first – you're going to laugh – was to use up leftover LEDs. When we buy reels of LEDs for our boards, the Nichias come in lots of 5000 and the Seoul Semiconductor Sunlike LEDs come in lots of 4500 – which is enough to make 75 boards. We then buy an extra reel of V3F1 LEDs and make another 21 boards from the leftover Nichia Optisolis. The Optisolis and Sunlike LEDs are expensive – US$0.13-14 each – so it's worth using them all up. There are 96 boards in each single run of High Lights.
We do this by design, as that's not the only reason we produce the High Red boards. The main reason is that in Australia there are many growers here using CMH lamps who already have an investment in their lighting set-up. CMH has a good amount of UVA, near-UV and blue spectrum, so there would be no point adding more. What CMH does benefit from is the addition of more red. So the High Red boards are a way for local growers to expand their grows and increase their efficiency without trashing their CMH lamps. It's also a good introduction to LED for growers who are not experienced with it and may be a little skeptical
There was a third reason, and that was the addition of UVA/UVB bulbs, such as reptile bulbs. The common belief at the time was that UVA and especially UVB increased cannabinoids and terpene levels. This seemed to make sense as it is theorised that cannabinoids evolved to protect the flowers and seeds from high levels of UV around the equator, and later in the mountainous regions of central Asia. This was before our own testing testing (although there were two scientific trials that also proved this) showed that higher levels of blue and near-UV light could also promote cannabinoid and terpene expression.
We will be doing some tests soon (in the next few weeks) comparing four different samples, all grown under High Lights. The difference will be one sample has been grown under High Red boards with the addition of CMH, one sample has been grown under High Red boards wth the addition of UVA/B reptile bulbs, and two samples have been grown under High Light UV boards (one will be a fresh sample, the other will be an older sample to see how cannabinoid content changes – or not – after six months of cure). All samples were grown in coco in similar weather using drain-to-waste, so it may not strictly be scientific, but it will be as close as we can get.
www.crop.bayer.com.au
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