How Recycling Energy During Photosynthesis can Potentially Help Increase Crop Yields
As a leading manufacturer and distributor of natural soil nutrition and liquid plant food products that enhance the effects of fertilizer and stimulate plant growth, we at Pro-Soil are driven by our mission to help farmers across the country improve the health of their soils and the quality of the crops they raise. We believe recycling energy during photosynthesis can help farmers better achieve this.
As most farmers know, agricultural production begins with the process of photosynthesis by green plants, which requires solar energy, water and carbon dioxide. It occurs through the plant’s ability to utilize solar energy in “fixing” atmospheric carbon dioxide into carbohydrates. The energy obtained is used for further biosynthesis in the plant, including essential amino acids and proteins.
The materials used for agricultural production are abundantly available with little initial cost. However, when it is observed as an economic activity, the fixation of carbon dioxide by photosynthesis has an extremely low efficiency mainly because of the low utilization rate of solar energy by green plants. Therefore, an integrated approach is needed to increase the level of solar energy utilization by plants so that greater amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide can be converted into useful substrates.
Although the potential utilization rate of solar energy by plants has been estimated theoretically at between 10 and 20 percent, the actual utilization rate is usually less than 1 percent.
Even some C4 plants, such as sugarcane, with very high photosynthetic efficiencies, will seldom exceed a utilization rate of 6 or 7 percent during the maximum growth period. The utilization rate is normally less than 3 percent even for optimum crop yields.
Past studies have shown that photo synthetic efficiency of the chloroplasts of host crop plants cannot be increased much further; this means that their bio mass production has reached a maximum level.
Therefore, the best opportunity for increasing biomass production is to somehow utilize the visible light, which chloroplasts cannot presently use, and the infrared radiation; together, these comprise about 80 percent of the total solar energy. Also, we must explore ways of recycling organic energy contained in plant and animal residues through direct utilization of organic molecules by plants.
Thus, it is difficult to exceed the existing limits of crop production unless the efficiency of utilizing solar energy is increased, and the energy contained in existing organic molecules (amino acids, peptides and carbohydrates) is utilized either directly or indirectly by the plant.
This approach could help to solve the problems of environmental pollution and degradation caused by the misuse and excessive application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to soils. Therefore, new technologies that can enhance the economic-viability of fanning systems with little or no use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides are urgently needed and should be a high priority of agricultural research both now and in the immediate future.
Our products improve soil health by stimulating and feeding native microbial life in the soil which creates a higher yielding crop.
To learn more about how you can increase photosynthetic efficiencies, contact us today!