All articles tagged with #greenhouses
A vast network of greenhouses in Almería, Spain, is the most visible human construction from space in Europe, transforming the arid landscape into a major agricultural hub that produces millions of tons of food annually, showcasing human ingenuity and sustainable farming innovations.
UCLA engineers have designed semi-transparent organic solar panels that can absorb energy from sunlight without blocking the light that plants need. The researchers found that adding L-glutathione extended the solar cells’ lifetime, improved their efficiency, and still allowed sunlight to reach plants in the greenhouse prototype. The crops in the greenhouse with the organic solar roof grew more than the crops in the regular greenhouse, as the L-glutathione layer blocked both ultraviolet rays that can inhibit plant growth and infrared rays that can cause greenhouses to overheat, thus causing the plants to need more water. The research team has now established a startup at UCLA that aims to scale up production of the organic solar cells for industrial use.