Tottori University, Corporation Fuji Electric, a lighting apparatus maker based at Iwami town, Tottori prefecture, and a research group organized by the Tottori Prefectural Government have recently found out that strawberry plants bore larger berries when they were continuously irradiated with far-red light for three hours per day after sunset.
The irradiation was effective for increasing a harvest ratio of large and larger-sized strawberries per plant by 10 percent as well as an output of those strawberries by 30 percent.
The Tottori Prefectural Government plans to spread uses of this lightning technology among strawberry producers, expecting the irradiation of the far-red light will be most effective particularly in areas with less sunlight where strawberry plants are apt to bear smaller berries.
At the Tottori Prefectural Horticultural Research Center, the far-red light irradiation was demonstrated at a farm of strawberry called “Akihime.”
Light emitting diode (LED) with a wavelength of 735 nanometers was irradiated over the strawberry farm for three hours per day after sunset during four months from November to February.
The demonstration revealed that LED irradiated plants of strawberry had longer petioles or leafstalks and their bigger leaves grew thick.
It is speculated that an output of strawberries has been increased by accelerating performance of photosynthesis in their leaves emitted with more light than usual.