Re: OT: light altering paint for greenhouses could help lengthen fruit growing season in the UK

On 24/11/2024 5:43 pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:

Light-altering paint for greenhouses could help lengthen the fruit growing season in the UK
  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/11/241120122018.htm
Summary:
  New spray developed by scientists could help boost UK farming and increase the UK's food security.
 Paper:
  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/admt.202400977
 stuff they use, quote:
'
  In this paper, we develop an approach based on readily prepared and cheap
  Eu3+-containing polyoxotitanium cages (Eu-POTs) which, we show,
  possess the necessary design features listed before.
  Having established the ground rules for selective modification,
  we introduce a working prototype luminophore with high PLQY (>60%)
  which is soluble in a range of commercial plastics, including water-based
  acrylic paint that can be sprayed onto conventional glass greenhouses
  in an agricultural environment.

What you needed to say - and didn't - was that the luminophore absorbs wavelengths shorter than red, and re-emits the energy at a wavvelength in the red which is efficiently absorbed by plant chlorophyll.
The article talks about UV light - though there's not a lot of that in sunlight, and even less in English sunlight - so it's not exactly helpful.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
  '