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Far-Red Revolution: Could Chlorophyll D/F Boost Indoor Crop Yields? · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello there, and welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, and today I'm going to talk about a research
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  paper that I have discovered,
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  which is really interesting, and while it doesn't mention hydroponics anywhere in the paper.
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  I think it could be really critical in making indoor
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  growing even more efficient and
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  potentially profitable in the
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  future now it's not something that's going to be practical and applicable
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  applicable this year it would require genetically
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  modifying crops so if this is something
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  you are vehemently against switch off now
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  and don't listen to the episode if it's something you're cool with and
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  you're happy to listen to potential benefits of
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  gm crops then then do do continue listening as
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  i say my opinion on gm crops is it's a technology it's neither evenal
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  nor bad depends how you use it you can
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  use it to create toxins and poisons or you can use it to help
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  increase food production and as the
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  paper says really at the start it's it
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  says you know by 2050 relative to 2010 we
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  will need 56 percent more food produced for
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  the increase in the global population so it's.
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  A big area that needs to be studied and the paper
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  is all about increasing the rate and
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  the amount of photosynthesis in crops and i
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  was when this started coming about this was a big thing about
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  2008 2010 when
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  this really started to really get mainstream funding and
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  things like this i always thought like but plants have evolved over millions
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  of years to be efficient surely they are already super efficient at photosynthesis
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  turns out that's not the case and especially with increased co2 levels in the
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  atmosphere plants haven't evolved evolved recently for that and while we do breed plants.
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  We don't evolve plants, we don't introduce new things, and so there's potential
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  there to increase photosynthesis.
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  And a number of different processes where they've tweaked enzymes involved in
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  photosynthesis or introduced new enzymes for photosynthesis and things like
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  this have resulted in increased levels of photosynthesis in crop plants.
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  And you've got to remember, a crop plant hasn't evolved to produce a crop for you,
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  it's evolved to survive in the natural world where its aims are different to
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  your aims and so there is potential to manipulate that and this paper is really
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  interesting and i'll go into the details why it's talking about.
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  Utilizing a different part of the spectrum that
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  plants currently don't use for photosynthesis so in
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  the previous episode i talked about red to far red ratios and
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  how they're really critical in shaping plant
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  morphology and i said that plants don't use you know
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  the 720 nanometer far
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  red or anywhere between 700 and 800 nanometers that deep dark red that you can
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  barely see that normally just goes straight through the leaves isn't absorbed
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  and there's a signal to the plants that they're being below that they're being
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  shaded now they can't utilize it for photosynthesis and so it goes straight through.
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  The chlorophylls, A, B, C, don't absorb it.
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  Phytochrome, the sensor for shading, does absorb it but only a very very small
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  amount and so it's completely useless.
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  It's lost light and it's a significant part of light.
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  Now plants do absorb most of the visible spectrum but not that part.
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  Now there are some organisms on earth that can photosynthesize in the 700 to 800 nanometre.
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  Range of light, but they're not plants. They are cyanobacteria or algae or blue-green
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  algae as they used to be called.
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  We don't call them blue-green algae because they're not related to seaweeds
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  and other types of algae like that, the macroalgae or even the diatoms, things like this.
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  So they're a bit like bacteria that can photosynthesize.
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  And the reason they can use this 700 to 800 nanometer light is because they
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  contain other types of chlorophyll, particularly chlorophyll D and chlorophyll F.
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  I should introduce this paper actually. It's a paper by Wang et al in Nature
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  Communications, and it was published this year, so it's bang up to date.
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  You can find it, as I said, in Nature Publications. I found it because it's
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  by Professor Stephen Long of Lancaster Environment Centre, and I was dicking
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  around on the Lancaster Environment website, and I found all his papers.
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  Of all the researchers at the Lancaster Environment Centre, where I used to work,
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  his papers were really interesting so i thought i'd go through and this one
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  really stood out as a potential topic to talk about so as i say chlorophyll
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  d and chlorophyll f they can absorb.
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  Light between 700 and 800 nanometers in the far red
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  region and these but this
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  cyanobacteria probably live deep down in the in ponds or
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  in the sea probably and and get
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  the light that the other algae the other phytoplankton and things
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  haven't been able to absorb so they if you
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  just fed them far red lights in a lab in the dark they'd
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  be able to photosynthesize now what would
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  happen if you introduced those chlorophylls
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  into plants could they photosynthesize and would they
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  grow better and that is the aim of this paper it didn't actually do that but
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  it just modeled mathematically modeled the the effects of that in soya bean
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  crops because soybean is obviously one of the big four crops in the world and
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  it found yes if you if you if you did include these,
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  chlorophylls then the way the plant would grow its architecture the way
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  the light would be absorbed the natural spectrum in the field it would it would
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  increase photosynthesis and biomass production by up to 26 which is massive
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  when it comes to plant growth now that's not why i'm interested in it i'm interested
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  in it from two two specific areas where i think it could actually be exploited
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  even more. And that's because.
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  Led lights in the far red region are
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  far far cheaper to produce than led lights in say the blue spectrum so if we
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  could have crops that could absorb far red light potentially you could grow
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  them indoors under far red lights for a fraction of the cost now i'm not sure about the running costs.
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  Of normal grow lights compared to a far red
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  grow light i'm not an expert when it comes to led lighting
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  if anyone out there is then that would be really interesting because
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  there are a whole host of different variables you have to consider
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  but there is potential there for growing
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  plants under early far red light in hydroponics
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  and potentially you would have less
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  issues with environmental control they wouldn't
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  produce so much heat and things like this you could
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  potentially grow different types of crops indoors if
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  they had this chlorophyll d and chlorophyll f in them
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  now obviously you're not going to be able to do that without genetically modified
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  crops but it's still interesting from a
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  scientific perspective to think about what are the potentials for
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  introducing these into plants or even
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  for growing far-red cyanobacteria and
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  harvesting the biomass or harvesting interesting chemicals from them growing
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  them indoors under far-red lights now the other area of application which isn't
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  mentioned in the paper and i'm sure lot I've thought about but is could you
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  use it for companion planting and.
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  Grow more than one crop in the field there is
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  a big area now in agriculture where
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  we have things like boats where where farmers grow beans then oats or they grow
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  an understory of clover and then grow a crop through it to allow for various
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  reasons sometimes it's to get two crops other times just to add biomass to the
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  soil now the reason this is of interest to that is because.
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  Imagine you've got one crop that's growing
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  really low and then you've got maize growing above it
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  maybe a two meter tall maize crop obviously the
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  maize crop is going to be absorbing the red light the blue light the
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  yellow light and letting all the far red light go through
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  and normally nothing would grow on the bottom
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  even the weeds get suppressed if you think
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  about hemp crop hemp crop a hemp field
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  there's very little weeds in a hemp field because there's
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  so much biomass so much of the red light there's no
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  red light for the weeds to actually absorb so even the shade
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  tolerant plants couldn't absorb that but if
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  you had a crop plant that was genetically modified to have
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  chlorophyll dnf in it and it could photosynthesize then you could grow that
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  under a canopy of maize and potentially get two crops something to consider
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  something to theorize about at the very least you don't have to actually go
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  and actually genetically modify the crop and do it, you can still think about it.
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  And so I think there's two really good applications. One is potential for including
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  it and increasing the efficiency of indoor crops by including chlorophyll C,
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  D and F and the potential for.
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  Using multiple crops in a field in a
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  multi-cropping system multi-cropping very popular
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  in in cuba and places like that where labor is
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  cheap and tractor uses trust petrol
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  is very high not so popular where you in areas.
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  Like the uk where you you struggle to maintain
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  both crops and you have to have very highly regulated about
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  what pesticides you can apply to each crop and when you can apply
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  island and things like that gets very complicated to do it in the
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  uk but yeah if we're looking at understory
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  an understory crop and a canopy crop you
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  know this potentially could be a way forward for this for
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  for dual use of a field okay so.
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  Very interesting area if you want to check out the paper
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  i shall add it to the show notes um and
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  yeah as i say it's by wang et
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  al wang is from the school
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  of life sciences in nanjing in china
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  so shout out to them i think
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  he's also or she he or she can't tell
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  if that's a male or female name from the carl rose
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  institute of genomic biology in the university of illinois
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  so shout out illinois as well okay thank
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  you very much for listening it's been a scientific one today
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  but really interesting one i think and and perhaps we'll
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  revisit some of the just pure scientific papers
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  that have got some interest to hydroponics even if
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  it's not you know built you know this is how you set up a grow
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  tent or this is how you feed nutrients or
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  add nutrients or this is how the best way to grow a crop i still
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  think it's interesting and i'm sure you do too so until
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  tomorrow that's been hydroponics daily and as always go and
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  leave a review on apple podcasts it helps grow the podcast unbelievably you
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  wouldn't believe how important it is apple podcast reviews to grow the show
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  because it will snowball once we get a fair few of those on there brilliant
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  thank you very much i do appreciate it see you tomorrow goodbye.