As it is not directly my field, I would like to ask for help in terms of the correlation between light intensity, wavelength, frequency and amplitude.
Let's say, I have a radiophotometer which measures the light intensity of 3 different light source with different wavelengths (blue, green, red). They are all set to 100 umol m-2 s-1 photon flux.
I am using these conditions to algae culturing.
My question is the following;
if blue light has shorter wavelength, higher frequency, therefore higher energy than red light, although intensity is set to equal (100 umol m-2 s-1),
Is it fair to assume that I am exposing my algae to higher energy for photosynthesis when I use blue light?
I hope my question is understandable,
Thank you very much for the responses in advance.
Although red, green and blue quanta have different energies (different frequency), photosynthesis is driven by the number of quanta (within the visible spectrum which is approximately the PAR spectrum), not by their energy. Thus 100 uM of red quanta = 100 uM blue quanta.
Highly appreciate your answer.
So further, there are considerable number of articles examining the effect of spectral irradiance on photosynthesis and you suggest that all these influence photosynthesis on a different level such as enzyme activity modification or metabolic processes?
Also, for instance, a blue (higher energy) photon and a red (lower energy) arrives to the reaction center (chl a, which absorbs both), the energy of the two does not influence the photosynthetic efficiency?
Thank you so much for your answer in advance!!!
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