[mikeyouse]

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out in more detail in the morning. I worked with an algae biofuels company so for fun we messed around with a lot of different light types with various strains. We got some crazy growth rates using a flat PBR with ~3:1 red:blue leds and no green whatsoever. Our best outdoor open pond results were about 25G/m2/day (on a 30cm deep, 1/2 hectare pond) but with the right leds we could do the equivalent of several hundred g/m2/day. We had good luck with high frequency pulsing too which further cut the energy usage.

Edit:

That user definitely seems to know their stuff, all the math and logic around quantum flux and measuring photon output seems solid. It seems that green light is more beneficial in the presence of white light which makes sense from what I remember of photosynthetic apparatus (I left that co. ~2 years agoso I'm definitely rusty). Id be curious to know why the green response curve is so different between algae and plants but perhaps an investigation for a different day.