Performance of Arabidopsis thaliana under different light qualities: comparison of light-emitting diodes to...

For precise phenotyping, Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh. is grown under controlled conditions with fluorescent lamps as the predominant light source. Replacement by systems based on light emitting diodes (LED) could improve energy efficiency and stability of light quality and intensity. To determine whether this affects the reproducibility of results obtained under fluorescent lamps, four Arabidopsis accessions and a phytochrome mutant were grown and phenotyped under two different LED types or under fluorescent lamps. All genotypes had significantly higher rosette weight and seed mass and developed faster under LED light than under fluorescent lamps. However, differences between genotypes were reproducible independent of the light source. Chlorophyll content, photosynthetic complex accumulation and light response curves of chlorophyll fluorescence parameters were indistinguishable under LED and fluorescent light. Principal component analysis of leaf metabolite concentrations revealed that the effect of a change from fluorescent light to LED light was small compared with the diurnal effect, which explains 74% of the variance and the age effect during vegetative growth (12%). Altogether, the replacement of fluorescent lamps by LED allowed Arabidopsis cultivation and reproduction of results obtained under fluorescent light.