The Society has established a Ultraweak (Bio)Photon Emission (UPE) research at Sathya Sai Grama, Muddenahalli, Chikkaballapura Dist. Karnataka ( 35 km form Bengaluru International Airport) and has initiated research in the following areas.
Research:
Study of Biotic and Abiotic Stress Signatures in Ultraweak Photon Emission from plants.
In particular,
- Drought, Heat and Flooding Stresses.
- Mechanical Injury – Wounding, cutting and crushing.
- Photon Induced Delayed Luminescence (DL).
are currently being studied on marigold, tomato, green pepper, ajwain, sunflower (whole) plants.
Research Facilities:
The facility at SSASR Biophoton Research Lab at Sathya Sai Grama.
Photon Counting System: Includes a PMT ( 9558QB; Electronic Tube Enterprises Ltd, Ruislip, UK), the core component of the detection system. The cathode end (52 mm diameter) PMT, with sensitivity at 160-870 nm (and maximum response at 420 nm) functions at 1200 V provided by HV2000 amplifier. The PMT is cooled to -28oC with liquid cooled thermoelectric housing (LCT50) in order to reduce the dark count (PMT noise) to 16 counts per second. The photon emission signal is processed by the photon counting unit (MCS-CT3) connected PMT via an amplifier-discriminator (AD8, both from ETL ), and fed to the desk top computer through USB port. MCS-CT8 comes with a Windows application software allows the computer to operate the counting process.
Filter System – for making spectral measurements.
It has a filter wheel with 12 openings of 52 mm (2”) diameter for cut-on absorption filters ( Schott) and is used for the spectral analysis of a specimen’s photon emission. Two light tight shutters are placed between the plant and the photomultiplier: shutter (a) between the darkbox and the filter wheel, and shutter (b) between the filter and the opening of the photomultiplier tube. Filter (a) protects the cut-on filters from being excited when the door of the measurement chamber was open. Shutter (b) protects the cathode of the photomultiplier tube form unwanted light. When the photon emission of a plant is measured, both shutters are open. Both shutters are closed for measuring the background noise of the photomultiplier. By only opening shutter (b), the spontaneous photon emission (phosphorescence) from the cut-on absorption filters is measured. Opening and closing of the shutters as well as the functioning of the filter wheel and the recording times were done by custom developed VB software
Dark Box: for placing the plant sample for measurements and it isolates the plant from external ambient light.
- Excitation box – to bring the plant sample to a predefined state.
- Desktop computer: for controlling the operation of the Photon-Counting-System and for recording and storing the data.
- Dark room – in which the entire equipment is placed to isolate it form the external ambient light.
- Polyhouse – for growing the plants required for experiments.
Future Plans.
A full-fledged lab for plant-UPE research with
- A high-performance cryogenic full-frame CCD camera designed for scientific purposes will provide two-dimensional in-vivo 2-D imaging of spontaneous UPE
- An advanced Filter System with bandpass filters.
- These are some of the immediate additions needed for the plant research lab.
Human-UPE Research Facility.
A fully automated human body UPE measurement with multimode measurement equipment and a building for this facility.
Proposed SSASR-UPE Center.
