Plant Photobiology Light

Plant Photobiology studies the interaction of light with living organisms. This application encompasses a number of areas including environmental photobiology, photomedicine, and UV photobiology, which is the study of the effects of ultraviolet radiation on plants, animals and humans. Scroll down for our selection of light meter systems for use with plant photobiology.

Plants and technology work together to feed a hungry world

Plants dominate the world. They provide the world’s oxygen supply and are a primary source of food for countless other living organisms including an ever expanding human population. Is it any wonder why, as a society, we have made huge leaps in plant growth technology? In the relatively short period of time humans have lived on earth, we have gone from foraging to farming and from invoking the gods, spirits, totems or even magic to aid in harvesting enough food from the soil to feed a hungry world to invoking the power of human knowledge and applied science in a never-ending attempt to try and guarantee it. The ox and the plow have given way to advanced computer driven machinery. Simple irrigation ditches are yielding to self-powered, central-pivot irrigation systems. New species of plants can be designed in the lab to yield more desirable characteristics. The planting seasons can now be extended through the use of sophisticated, climate controlled greenhouses and even the soil itself that plants have grown in for millions of years can now be replaced through hydroponics. Through all of this invention and reinvention of plant technology, one thing has remained relatively the same, the plants amazing ability to keep the world going.

Accurate measurement of light is PAR for the course

Through no small miracle, plants change the light they receive from the sun and the carbon dioxide animals exhale along with water into the chemical energy they need for growth with the oxygen we, along with millions of other species of animals, need to breath as a waste product in a process called Photosynthesis. The interaction of light and plant is a complex science involving various pigments within the plant such as chlorophyll, carotenes , and xanthophylls that reflect or absorb energy from certain wavelengths of the light they receive to maximize the photosynthesis process. Understanding the exact variables within the light source and their effects on the plant is crucial to being able to understand how to produce bigger and better plants and to maximize their numbers in traditional and artificial growing environments. PAR, or Photosynthetically Active Radiation, is the name given to the band of solar light that is useful to plants in the intake of energy and production of oxygen. This region of the solar spectrum corresponds to the portion of light that is visible to humans. Within the PAR region of the spectrum, the light is further broken down into the primary plant growth bands of blue, red, and far red. Understandably, the measurement of the PAR region and the individual plant growth bands is very important in modern agriculture, forestry, and oceanography. PAR measurement is an indicator of productive farmland and can be used as a means of judging investment potential. Through the use of sensors, maps of PAR availability and utilization throughout entire ecosystems such as the ocean reefs and rainforest canopies can be developed for conservation and reclamation as well as commercial agriculture.

Several available plant growth systems

International Light Technologies provides a complete range of plant growth radiometers including a system with a PAR plant growth detector that was designed through the joint efforts of International Light Technologies and a team of plant physiologists, to specifically measure the effect of light on plant growth in the PAR region of the spectrum. Detectors configured to measure the individual plant growth bands are also available as well as the ILT900 Portable Wideband Spectroradiometer, a powerful spectral analysis tool capable of working in the harsh environments typical of plant growth studies.