Nano -Technology and Flowers!

Interesting little read.

                Searching the web for info on flowers and plants, I came across an interesting little article about flowers and the field of Nano –Technology. 

                Anyone who is in the flower industry or who receives flowers knows that the life span of fresh cut flowers is 4 to 12 days at most.  This research suggest that maybe there is some hope to prolong this time  to around 12 to 20 days with the use of silver nano particles in the vase water.

                I am going to get a little techie here so bear with me.  What causes, your flowers to decay are the, bacteria which after a few days, will start to grow in the vase water of your flower arrangement.  The bacteria will grow so much that it will then start to block the xylem vessels responsible for the water uptake of your flowers.  What keeps your flowers looking fresh is the water uptake through those xylem vessels.  Therefore it is the blockage of the xylem vessels by the bacteria in the vase water which causes the flowers to wilt.  We can see this by the cloudy water, and browning of the stem bottoms after a few days.  This is why we request to our customers to change the water and re-cut the bottom of the stems when you notice the water getting cloudy.

                 Now we need to give credit where credit is due.   This study was conducted by: Seyed Hossein NEMATI, Ali TEHRANIFAR, Behnam ESFANDIARI*, Azar REZAEI.  From the Department of Horticultural Science, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Faculty of Agriculture, Mashhad, Iran.  What the scientists did was to do an experiment, in which they would add silver nano particles to the vase water of floral arrangements.  The flowers used were ornamental lilies.   Using different sized silver Nano particles, about 20nm average give or take, they found that Nano silver treatments significantly enhanced the vase life of cut flowers. 

                There conclusions of the study are that the silver nano particles get drown into a plants xylem vessels keeping them open and thus the flower hydrated longer, The silver nano particles also help to slow down the process of the bacteria blocking the xylem Vessels .  Thus making your arrangement last longer.  FANTASTIC!! Now I have only one Question?  WHERE IN THE HELL CAN I BUY ME SOME SILVER NANO PARITCLES.?