I feel some cultivars prefer hps as its what they been going under mainly for decades and regardless of intensity of lighting indoors is still always technically low light conditions think how much the sun actually throws out its just adaptation in alot of strains id say to hps lighting
I'm going to reply to this post because there is certainly a lot of truth to it. Cannabis was grown indoors and selectively bred under HPS for decades which meant that those strains and individual plants that performed well indoors under HPS were bred over generations and passed on their genes.
I won't comment of HPS vs the Sun except to say that the one of the things they have in common is they both produce a lot of infra-red light which we feel as heat because IR wavelengths interact with water molecules in such a way that the energy of the IR waves is absorbed quicker than visible wavelengths. Heat, which is the transfer of energy, speeds up chemical reactions. Photosynthesis is an endothermic reaction which absorbs heat (energy). As temperatures increase most living things grow faster up to a point.
We say HPS is not as efficient as LED but that is only because HPS produces a lot of light outside the visible range so is not counted as PAR. The added warmth makes plants grow faster but only if grow temperatures are low to begin with and it also depends on the species. At higher temperatures growth will slow due to heat stress as the plant over transpires to cool itself which is not very efficient.
We are one of the few grow light companies that will not tell you that LED will outyield HPS because it is still hard to outyield HPS if everything else is optimal. HPS has a good amount of far red light which helps photosynthesis and fruiting and flowering. The extra far red and infrared will cause plants to stretch more under HPS than LED. Plant canopies are not 2D they are 3D so the HPS plant will stretch a little more and then fill in along the branches because the added stretch allows more light to penetrate and swells flowers along the length of the branch.
What we will tell you is that LED can rival HPS for yield while consuming much less energy. LED also provides better quality because it has more blue light and if it also has violet and UVA around 400nm it stresses the plant a little more into producing secondary metabolites. I know there is ongoing debate about UV and cannabinoids but we feel there is too much focus on UVB and short wavelength UVA that carries a lot of energy and not enough attention paid to the longer wavelength violets and blues that have produced good results in the tests we have done. The original High Light LED that I believe
@coreywebster is using is around 2900K and has some UVA and violet from 395-430nm.
We use a lot of Nichia 2700K CRI90 diodes in our lights because we also like red and far red and have seen the results.
@Prawn Connery noticed this when he was growing under Nichia diodes a number of years ago and incorporated them into the original High Light which he designed. That is the light
@coreywebster is using