The solar radiation utilisation of green plants and food production

Varga-Haszonits, Zoltán – Varga, Zoltán

Keywords: utilisation of solar radiation, economics, agrotechnology, cereals, potato

The Earth’s biomass production - and thus the performance of agriculture - essentially depends on the green plants that are able to utilise solar radiation. This arrives at the Earth’s surface with significant losses. Only about one eight billionth of it could be converted to organic material by plants. In fact, the actual efficiency value of radiation is far from 100%. The theoretical maximum is about 22-24 %, but the average radiation utilisation of Earth’s surface is only 0.23 %. The profitability of Hungarian crop production is basically infl uenced by the efficiency of radiation utilisation by four important economic crops (winter wheat, winter barley, maize, potatoes) occupying the majority of domestic arable land. The higher radiation use efficiency of plants leads to a broadly similar rate of increase in yields. Taking into account that the actual average efficiency values (0.8 to 2.6 %) are only 5-10 % of the potential radiation utilisation, it can be said that this complex plant trait can be improved, and significant improvements in yield can be achieved by relatively low increases in radiation use efficiency. For maximum efficiency it is necessary to apply a variety of practical (breeding or agronomic) processes together in a complex manner. The four investigated plant radiation utilisation trends also suggest that the complex application of agrotechnology was inadequate in the 1990s (but that is also true of subsequent years) because it did not encourage sufficient radiation utilisation – unlike the previous decades.

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