Signify expands trial at Porta Nova

Signify today announced that Porta Nova, one of the world’s largest growers of Red Naomi roses, is expanding its Philips GreenPower LED toplighting trial with a dedicated rose spectrum after a successful hybrid trial with LED on a small area. The LED toplighting with rose spectrum increases light levels year-round without increasing heat. Porta Nova decided to invest in 5,000 square meters.

The new LED dedicated rose spectrum allows growers to increase the number of lighting hours, making it a highly efficient way for them to increase production and produce high quality crops due to the stabilized climate. It is available with the newest generation of Philips GreenPower LED toplighting. These specific products offer light output levels that typically deliver 500 or 600µmol/s per module at a very high efficacy of up to 3.0 µmol/J.

In the past year, plant specialists from Signify have been working intensively with a group of about 30 rose growing companies, consultants, universities, research institutes and representatives from the Dutch government, active in developing the rose sector, to develop a dedicated light recipe with a LED spectrum for cut roses. The new cut rose spectrum has been developed specifically to grow high yields of top-quality roses in full LED in Western European climate conditions.

“The results we saw during our research to develop the ultimate rose spectrum, are now also being replicated at Porta Nova,” said Udo van Slooten, Business Leader Horticulture at Signify. “This is clear proof that the new toplighting with dedicated rose spectrum lives up to its promise and can be utilized at a much larger scale.”

Porta Nova is a leading rose nursery in The Netherlands. The company was created as a result of a merger of three rose nurseries under the names of Aad Luijk, Leon Dukker and Nico van Vuuren. Since they began in 2002 on 4.3 hectares, they have steadily grown to their current size of 20 hectares. They have been trialing and working with Philips LED lighting since 2015.

“With the higher light intensity, we have increased our production of Red Naomi roses,” said Leon Dukker, general manager at Porta Nova. “After testing the GreenPower LED toplighting with the dedicated rose spectrum at our facility, we expect that this will improve our yields, so it was a logical step to implement this new system.”