Publications by authors named "Ernest Skowron"

Indoor farming systems enable plant production in precisely controlled environments. However, implementing stable growth conditions and the absence of stress stimulants can weaken plants' defense responses and limit the accumulation of bioactive, health-beneficial phytochemicals. A potential solution is the controlled application of stressors, such as supplemental ultraviolet (UV) light.

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Significant efforts have been made to optimise spectrum quality in indoor farming to maximise artificial light utilisation and reduce water loss. For such an improvement, green (G) light supplementation to a red-blue (RB) background was successfully employed in our previous studies to restrict both non-photochemical quenching (NPQ) and stomatal conductance (). At the same time, however, the downregulation of NPQ and had the opposite influence on leaf temperature ().

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The artificial light used in growth chambers is usually devoid of green (G) light, which is considered to be less photosynthetically efficient than blue (B) or red (R) light. To verify the role of G light supplementation in the spectrum, we modified the RB spectrum by progressively replacing R light with an equal amount of G light. The tomato plants were cultivated under 100 µmol m s of five different combinations of R (35-75%) and G light (0-40%) in the presence of a fixed proportion of B light (25%) provided by light-emitting diodes (LEDs).

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Photosynthetic pigments of plants capture light as a source of energy for photosynthesis. However, the amount of energy absorbed often exceeds its utilization, thus causing damage to the photosynthetic apparatus. Plants possess several mechanisms to minimize such risks, including non-photochemical quenching (NPQ), which allows them to dissipate excess excitation energy in the form of harmless heat.

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The involvement of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the progress of leaf senescence has long been suggested, but there are contrasting results to either support or deny the positive correlation between the senescence progression and the level of ROS-triggered lipid peroxidation. The inconsistency among reported results can partly be attributed to the poor specificity of the most commonly employed colorimetric assay and changes in the ratio of dry weight/fresh weight during leaf senescence. In this study we determined the end-product of lipid peroxidation malondialdehyde (MDA) by GS-MS, and analyzed its changes during senescence of tobacco leaves as calculated on dry weight basis.

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Almost six decades of studies explained many aspects of cytokinin complex metabolism, such as, biogenesis, degradation, signal perception and interaction with other phytohormones (mainly with auxins). A dual character of cytokinins' action on the nuclear genes (activation and repression) has been explained by recognition of the two types on nuclear receptors, which ensure a precise mechanism of self-control. Cytokinins promote the process of photosynthesis at different levels of plant- and cellular organization (development of leaves and plastids, influence on the photosynthetic proteins, activation of photosynthetic genes, etc.

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