The French company Agripolyane, devoted to the development of agricultural plastics, together with its supplier Casacade, specialized in the manufacture of additives for this type of plastic films, has presented its new product: a luminescent plastic for greenhouses that performs the photoconversion of light by increasing the wavelength of sunlight, adapting it to the needs of the plant and thus improving its development. This technology has been called Magic Lite.
Light energy
Light is a source of energy for the photosynthesis and a signal for the plant's photomorphogenesis. The amount of light received by the plant; that is, its intensity, affects its photosynthesis, while the quality of the light, which has to do with its distribution, affects both photosynthesis and photomorphogenesis. These processes allow the plant to grow and adapt to light, affecting its shape and flowering. The duration of exposure to light (photoperiod) mainly affects the flowering.
The photosynthesis is the photochemical reaction produced in the plant's chloroplasts. It allows the energy of light, both blue (high frequency) and red (low frequency) to be used to convert atmospheric CO2 into carbohydrates. In plants, there are several pigments that make the photosynthesis possible, such as chlorophyll and carotenoids.
Plant nutrition
The plant's photoreceptors also capture blue and red light in order to perform the photomorphogenesis, which has to do with the plant's protection from UV-B rays, shade evasion, flowering and the movement of its stomata.
The Cascade technology aims to modify the wavelengths of blue and red light in order to improve the photosynthesis and photomorphogenesis of plants, so that light, instead of being lost, is transformed from one color to another. The main feature of the additive for double-roof plastic is that it transforms ultraviolet light into blue light, and the green one into red, so that plants growing under a double roof with this plastic will enjoy a greater concentration of blue and red light that under standard solar light.
New technology
Photoconversion is a technology that "has been researched by a laboratory in France for more than 25 years, and which Cascade took over when the company was created in 2012 in order to improve it and make it useful for crops under existing greenhouse conditions at a good price." It has been tested in 104 trials since 2013 in France and Spain.
Source: lavozdealmeria.com