Combinatorial bioassay for fast screening of organic agrivoltaic materials

Abstract

ABSTRACT Agriphotovoltaics (APV) combines crop production with solar energy generation to address increasing demands for food and energy while reducing land-use competition. Unlike conventional opaque photovoltaic systems, semitransparent organic photovoltaics (OPVs) selectively absorb light, potentially improving efficiency but also altering both light quantity and spectral quality, key factors affecting plant growth. Here, we developed a rapid bioassay based on hypocotyl elongation to evaluate plant responses to OPV-filtered light using Arabidopsis thaliana and Cardamine hirsuta , two species with contrasting shade strategies. Screening a diverse set of OPV materials revealed that plant growth responses depend more on spectral composition than on total light intensity alone. Certain materials, such as PTB7-Th and D18, produced growth patterns similar to neutral shading, while others promoted elongation. Our analyses identified blue light wavelengths, linked to cryptochrome activity, as more critical than red light wavelengths, linked to phytochrome activity, for maintaining normal development. These findings provide a scalable framework to assess OPV-plant compatibility and demonstrate that optimizing spectral quality alongside light intensity is essential for designing efficient APV systems that sustain crop performance while generating renewable energy.

Plant phenotyping relevance

植物の光応答を測定する迅速・スケーラブルな低胚軸伸長バイオアッセイを開発し、OPV材料評価に適用しており、表現型取得法が中心的です。

Code and data availability

The supplied blocks describe a hypocotyl-elongation bioassay for screening OPV materials in A. thaliana and C. hirsuta, but contain no public phenotype dataset, image/sensor data deposit, author analysis code, or trained model. The only URLs mentioned (ImageJ at rsb.info.nih.gov and the PSI SpectraPen at psi.cz) are in

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