You probably know Market vendor Growing Opportunities for their heirloom tomatoes and cucumbers, available year-round because they grow hydroponically in greenhouse in Alcalde. Now, Growing Opportunities is working with UbiQD on technology that could expand greenhouse crop production and allow crops to grow on other planets.
UbiQD,a Los Alamos-based nanotechnology development company, announced in 2018 that it launched its first commercial quantum dot (QD)-containing product, the UbiGro™ greenhouse film. They developed the technology at M.I.T. and Los Alamos National Labs.
UbiGro is a retrofit luminescent film that hangs over crops. The film absorbs UV and blue light and shifts it into the red and orange part of the spectrum, which is preferred by flowering plants (like tomatoes and cucumbers). Click here to learn more about the process. The goal is to boost yield and flavor of greenhouse grown crops, but the researchers say this method could work on Mars and the Moon! The film is currently installed at Growing Opportunities as well as other greenhouses in New Mexico, Oregon, Colorado, the Netherlands, and the UK.
The project was recently featured in KOAT news.