For agricultural ultraweak photon emission measurements both spontaneous photon emission and delayed luminescence technologies are used.
Spontaneous photon emission is mainly applied to characterize the defense systems of plants, such as the quality of the defense system for plants to protect themselves against attacks from pathogens such as bacteria, fungi, and insects.
Delayed luminescence provides information about vitality of a biological product. It is based on the integral structural quality in relation to the developmental state of a product. Vitality is a novel quality marker of food products and complimentary to commonly used tests for chemical content and structural properties of a product.
Delayed luminescence is used:
- to predict germination capacity of seeds,
- to estimate stage of growth and ripening,
- to predict vitality under storage conditions.