Harmful Effects of Solar Lighting to Plants

Solar Lighting

• Earth’s atmosphere acts as a type of buffer that filters solar rays before sunlight reaches the planet's surface. This filtering material consists of a type of oxygen called ozone. Carbon dioxide emissions and chlorofluorocarbons deplete ozone materials over time and allow more solar rays to reach Earth. The sun emits three types of ultraviolet radiation -- UV-A, UV-B and UV-C -- each of which reacts differently to ozone materials. The ozone layer absorbs UV-C rays, so these rays never reach Earth’s surface. UV-A and UV-B rays do reach Earth’s surface, though the ozone layer provides some protection from UV-B rays. In effect, excessive amounts of all three types of solar emissions can damage plants.

DNA Effects

• Deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, molecules control every aspect of plant development from the start of a plant’s life to its eventual death. Excessive amounts of solar lighting can have harmful effects on a plant’s ability to manufacture DNA molecules as well as how these molecules perform throughout a plant’s development. Impaired DNA structures can impact cell division processes within a plant's root, stem and leaf structures. Solar lighting effects can also impair plant hormonal secretions, which regulate different stages of a plant’s growth. As plants manufacture DNA materials, harmful lighting effects can give rise to mutated cells and cells that die off prematurely.

Photosynthesis Effects

• Plants use solar lighting, water, light and carbon dioxide gases to manufacture the food or sugars that feed and fuel plant structures. These processes take place in plant chlorophyll receptors located on leaf and stem structures. Excess amounts of UV-B rays in particular produce harmful effects within a plant’s chlorophyll receptors. These receptors absorb blue and red light waves and convert the energy contained inside these waves into sugar materials using water and carbon dioxide gases in the process. Damaged receptors can impair a plant's cell water and carbon dioxide exchanges, which slows the plant’s food production.

Plant Growth Effects

• Solar lighting can have harmful effects on plant growth rates as well as on the formation of plant structures. Germinating seeds produce a structure known as a hypocotyl, which becomes the first stem produced by a plant. When exposed to excess amounts of UV-B rays, hypocotyl growth moves at a slower pace and can result in stunted overall stem growth.

  Chemical processes taking place inside stem and leaf structures produce the flowers and seeds found on plants. Harmful exposures to solar lighting affect how the cells inside these structures function. In effect, reductions in growth rate and in flower and seed sizes can result from harmful solar lighting effects.