You’ve spent a ton of time in the garden this season, perfecting everything your eyes can see and your hands can touch. By daylight, your sprawling outdoor paradise is a gorgeous sight to behold, but come nightfall, all your hard work literally fades to black. So, what does one do with this night-clad, soil-and-roots situation, save for a few solar lights here or there? After all, it’s not like plants can just glow in the dark — or can they?
Horticultural science is a wonderful thing, especially when talented minds come up with a way to make plants gleam majestically in the midnight hour. In a recent study, a research team led by Shuting Liu — a bioengineer at South China Agricultural University — dove into the nitty-gritty of turning common succulents into illumination-enhanced garden fixtures, and we’re champing at the bit to land this flora in our own botanical bastions. Let’s unpack this rather enchanting discovery.
Phosphors have arrived to give bioluminescence a break
Up to this point, whenever plants glowed, it was thanks to bioluminescence, a naturally occurring process where chemicals like luciferin, luciferase, and oxygen run the show. Stir this molecular melting pot enough, and you get bioluminescent lighting. Organisms like foxfire fungi and Jack-o-Lantern mushrooms are renowned for their luminescent abilities, as are some species of jellyfish, squid, and fireflies. Scientists have even found three types of glow-in-the dark sharks!
Contextually, genetic modification can be a hot-button topic, even as it relates to plant life. Over the years, scientists have harvested bioluminescent materials from various fungi, injecting these chemicals into non-glowing plants, and the results are pretty astonishing. But after a successful batch of succulent experiments — in which phosphors were used to make plants glow, instead of bioluminescent elements — Liu and her team achieved a breakthrough.
Injecting plant leaves with microscopic afterglow particles has proved to be cheaper than genetic modification and less risky for overall plant health. Liu and her crew hypothesized that the phosphors would allow the succulents to deliver a powerful glow experience (sans photosynthesis), and they were right.
It took a minute to find the right balance between variables, including soil porosity, injection volume and pressure, and phosphor size, but once Liu’s team settled on the mesophyll cell wall of the succulent’s plant leaves, they struck gold (semi-literally). This is a part of the plant involved in photosynthesis, making it a natural choice for hanging onto Liu’s phosphors. Charge the plants with all-day sunlight or LED bulbs, and you’ve got yourself an armada of glowing succulents.
What does this mean for our gardens and greenhouses?
While Liu still plans to conduct long-form testing to ensure the phosphors are not negatively impacting the succulent leaves, the future of bioengineering looks very bright (we couldn’t wait to write that line).
Not too long from now, we could be walking around in full bioengineered gardens, with several plant types hosting the phosphors that reacted so well to succulent leaves. For now, the plants only hold their glow for about two hours after being exposed to LED light or sunshine, and experimentation is still underway, but depending on how bright and colorful these hypothetical gardens could be, we may not need to worry about wiring up a greenhouse with expensive lighting fixtures. The same goes for on-property walking paths usually lit by light posts staked into the ground.
Who knew that phosphor-packed plants might one day be responsible for cutting down on our utility bills? Liu’s study is very much still in its infancy, but we’re eager to see how this exciting biotechnology improves and evolves through the coming years. Should the long-term effects prove inconsequential, we could be looking at entire city blocks lit by plant light.