Plant Growth
Trial Data by Aqua-B in Plant Growth – Feb 2022
Irrigation & Hydroponics
- In irrigation and hydroponics, key phasing-out of agricultural pesticides in the present and near future affords particular opportunities for ozone NBs, in that they can act as a potent pesticide and simply degrade to oxygen in a slower fashion with Aqua-B’s NBs (about ten times slower).
- However, a key challenge is the need to boost dissolved oxygen (DO), typically to near, or even occasionally above, Henry’s-Law solubility levels. General observations are that plants favour DO levels of circa 12–14 mg/l, whilst the Henry’s-Law DO level is about 8.5 mg/l for air at 25 deg C , although most irrigation water routinely has DO levels of only 5–6.5 mg/l.
- Aqua-B can ‘nano-oxygenate’ water with oxygen-enriched NBs simply drawing from ambient air, at exceedingly low-energy cost, and these NBs act as ‘reservoirs’ to provide gas (O2, N2) to plants, being able to penetrate the plant-cell-wall matrix.
- The “carrier effect” of Aqua-B’s thick-skinned, ultra-dense NBs is transformative, as their long-lived, hardy nature allows for the adsorption of nutrients or additives thereon – enhancing delivery into the plant roots and slower in-vivo release (and requiring less nutrients in the first place).
- CO2 or O2, or mixtures thereof, can also be made into NBs and sprayed in water (micro-)droplets, g., as a fog, into the stomata of plants, also enhancing growth cycles.
Aqua-B used its in-line, pipe-based NB generator at up to 100 l/min to perform irrigation and hydroponics on lettuce, watercress and basil:
Taking in just ambient air, with the oxygen-enrichment effect getting this to two-thirds oxygen in the NB state, the hydroponic growth of lettuce was almost doubled (about 92% enhanced) compared to tap water for hydroponics! Similar near-doubling was observed for basil and watercress, with the most dramatic effects seen visually during the early stages of growth.
• In open-field irrigation in soil, the air-fed improvement for NBs was about 35% for lettuce and 40% for basil, given that the NBs need to diffuse through the soil to reach the roots and plant cell-wall matrix.
• For aerosol spray-fog of CO2 NBs for stomatal delivery in leaves, preliminary results indicate an improvement of growth in leafy greens in excess of a third compared to the control, albeit this is more tentative.
• Given that “ultra-dense NBs” serve as an efficient and robust delivery agent for nutrients (via electrostatic adsorption to their thick skin), less nutrients are optimal when using NBs in plant growth!
