We are pleased to announce that Prof. Tsenkova and Prof. Muncan are guest editing special issue “Aquaphotomics – Exploring Water Molecular Systems in Nature” in the open access journal Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049, https://www.mdpi.com/journal/molecules).

Special Issue: Aquaphotomics – Exploring Water Molecular Systems in Nature

Website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/molecules/special_issues/Water_Molecular

Submission Deadline (extended): 30 June 2022

Author instructions can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/molecules/instructions.

If you are interested in contribution or have any questions, please do not hesitate to let us know or contact the Assistant Editor (olivia.zhang@mdpi.com).

We look forward to your submissions!

Mr. Shogo Shiegoka, the owner of the “Yunosato Aquaphotomics Lab” located in Wakayama, had an interview with the local TV station. In the interview, he talked about how he learned about Aquaphotomics and the future plan of the Aquaphotomics Lab. Check out the video below!

(English and Japanese subtitles available on YouTube)

It is with sad heart that we share this news with the Aquaphotomics community. Professor Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and a winner of Nobel Prize in 2008, died, aged 89 on 8^th February, 2022.

Professor Montagnier is one of the scientists whose life really made a difference.  His dedication to science and his co-discovery of HIV highly influenced the research and development of antiretroviral medicines, which helped saved the lives of millions of people around the world.

We will fondly remember his lectures at the Water Conference (on the Physics, Chemistry and Biology of Water), his visit to Kobe University, our former Biomeasurement Technology Laboratory, and our experiments together.

We shared a love for water and love for science. And we will always be grateful for his support for Aquaphotomics and our work.

He is a friend that will be very missed.

Aquaphotomics community sends heartfelt condolences to his family and friends.

The development of non-destructive methods for early detection and understanding the mechanism of cold stress in plants is one of the very important aspects of crop breeding programs to which aquaphotomics research aims to contribute with new insights and solutions.

After many years of dedicated research in this area, we are proud to report that the first step towards this goal has been achieved. Our paper “Aquaphotomics Research of Cold Stress in Soybean Cultivars with Different Stress Tolerance Ability: Early Detection of Cold Stress Response” has been published this month in the Special Issue of Molecules journal, Aquaphotomics – Exploring Water Molecular Systems in Nature.

This paper is a product of joint efforts of our well known aquaphotomics team, Assist. Prof. Dr J. Muncan and Prof. Dr R. Tsenkova, and also pioneers of exploration of plant stress using aquaphotomics, Prof. Dr B.M.S. Jinendra and Prof. Dr S. Kuroki. Prof. Jinendra and Prof. Tsenkova authored the first aquaphotomics publication about early diagnosis of mosaic virus infection in soybean using aquaphotomics, more than 10 years ago, paving the way towards many other contributions in biotic stress diagnosis. Prof. Kuroki on the other hand, co-authored the first aquaphotomics paper which reported that the ability of the resurrection plants to survive very long periods without water are directly related to the water self-organization expressed as dynamic changes of water molecular structures in their leaves.

The newly published paper shows that with aquaphotomics, we were able to detect the effects of even very mild cold stress in soybean plants, in a completely non-destructive manner, and further on to even observe that soybean cultivars with different stress tolerance abilities could be distinguished. This paper is only the first one in the planed series of 3 papers, all of which explore the cold stress in soybean from different aspects, but in the future publications we will show how the genotypic differences are actually related to water molecular structure of the leaves resulting in different susceptibility of soybean cultivars to cold stress.

Stay with us and wait for more exciting discoveries in our next soybean publications.

Until then, we hope you will enjoy our first paper in this series and the incredible simplicity of early cold stress detection.

The paper can be found at the following webpages: 

Abstract: https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/27/3/744
Full Text: https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/27/3/744/htm

We are very pleased to announce that a new article on Aquaphotomics has been accepted and will be published in the “Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer” (Volume 277, January 2022, 107991).

“Self-subtraction improves consistency in spectral curve fitting” by Dušan Kojić, Roumiana Tsenkova, and Masato Yasui

Highlights
• A purely functional algorithm for resolving positions and widths of overlapped bands is presented on the basis of self-subtracted spectra.
• Significant improvements, demonstrated both theoretically and practically, over the popular second derivative transform are achieved.
• The method eliminates any bias related to the choice of a basis function because it outputs the least-squares fit to the data.
• Higher consistency with retained accuracy follow naturally from a systematic analysis of XRF spectra, across a variety of Voigt profile line shapes.

The article can be viewed and downloaded at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jqsrt.2021.107991.

Recent News

• Why Is Water a Miracle? A Bulgarian TV Episode Now Available with English & Japanese Subtitles2026-05-21
• Professor Roumiana Tsenkova Named Among the World’s Top 2% Scientists for Six Consecutive Years2025-11-06
• “The Voice of Water” – From EXPO2025 Aquaphotomics Day2025-11-01
• “Aquaphotomics Day” featured in Bulgarian News Agency (BTA)2025-10-21
• Discover the Beauty of Water and Life in new documentary “Pale Blue Dot”2024-10-24

The end of this year will mark an important step in aquaphotomics development on a global level. The first aquaphotomics book titled “Aquaphotomics for Bio-diagnostics in Dairy – Applications of Near-Infrared Spectroscopy” is scheduled to be published by Springer on December 11, 2021.

The book is a result of more than 20 years of experience of working with near infrared spectroscopy in dairy and describes applications for measurement of raw milk components like fat, protein, lactose, urea and fatty acids. Further, it investigates factors that influence the accuracy of measurements like individuality of the dairy cow and then, for the first time, proceeds to establish the near infrared spectroscopy as a disease and bio diagnostics tool. The book shows that near infrared spectroscopy can be used for measurement of somatic cell count, mastitis diagnosis, estrus detection and other parameters of health and nutrition status of the animals thanks to the use of usually neglected water absorbance bands. These results present near infrared spectroscopy as a tool that provides a valuable feedback for dairy farm management and optimization of health status of animals.

The book shows how the utilization of water absorption regions in near infrared spectra brought entirely new dimension to NIRS which led to recognition of informational value of water spectra and led to the development of aquaphotomics, a novel science whose foundation was exactly the dairy research work. With more than 20 chapters, describing in detail experimental work, the book offers easy replication of performed experiments and can serve as a guide for anyone interested in application of aquaphotomics for bio-diagnostics.

The release of the book is schedule for 11th December, and can be found at the Publisher website page https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811671135. Since the publisher website is going to have a makeover in November, if the above provided link is not available, feel free to contact us for more information. Or you can preorder the book using the following links:

Barnes & Noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/aquaphotomics-for-bio-diagnostics-in-dairy-roumiana-tsenkova/1140159927

Google Books:
https://books.google.co.jp/books/about/Aquaphotomics_for_Bio_diagnostics_in_Dai.html?id=Vn6izgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y

For all interested in aquaphotomics research and looking how to explain it to someone in simple words, we would like here to share an excellent short article, published at the beginning of this year as a part of news in Chemistry Research. The article Using light to reveal water impurities can be found at the following link:

https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/chemistry/journals/new-chemistry-research/using-light-to-reveal-water-impurities