Cultivating methods and apparatuses

Abstract

A cultivator for damaging undesirable plants in an agricultural setting is disclosed. Embodiments of the cultivator include one or more energy emitters that stress target biological material, and the energy emitters in particular embodiments stress plants in at least two different ways, such as imparting light at certain wavelengths that cause dual effect stressors to the plant, such as heat related stress and photochemical stress similar to a sunburn. Some embodiments include a focusing system that spreads out narrow light beams and/or brings multiple light beams together. Some embodiments produce light with wavelengths between 365 nm and 488 nm, maintain the light on target plants for 25 ms to 300 ms, some with a power intensity of the light at the target plants from 300 W/cm2 to 1,000 W/cm2, and/or with a spot size at the target plants of approximately 12 mm2.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.