This diploma thesis is focused on foliar fertilization. It is nowadays one of the most widespread types of application of commercial fertilizers. Concern of this thesis is the study of plant cuticles as a thin layer on the leaves. These thin membranes are responsible for regulation of water transport and nutrients. Further function of plant cuticles is the mechanical protection of the outer part of the plant. Plant cuticles were characterized by fluorescence spectroscopy, classical optical microscopy and profilometry. The main aim of this thesis is the optimization and verification of experimental methodology aimed to the transport of commercial humic product through plant cuticles by simple diffusion techniques. The results obtained by presented diffusion techniques of humic product through plant cuticles were correlated with the same diffusion experiments through synthetic membranes with defined pore size and density. The study on transport of commercial humic product was realized in hydrogel medium by two different diffusion methods – non-stationary diffusion technique and diffusion couple. The important part of this diploma thesis is the characterization of supported hydrogel matrix by rheology tests, mercury intrusion porosimetry and scanned electron microscopy. Conclusions of this diploma thesis could be used for improving of efficiency of foliar fertilization.

Plant cuticles are extracellular membranes covering aerial organs of plants, whose main functions rely on the protection against water loss, mechanical injury from the environment, attack of microorganism, and also regulation of gas exchange. Among the several constituents of plant cuticles, waxes are those that play an important role in their barrier properties. In order to enhance the mechanical properties of wax, NFC was applied in. In the project, mainly two kinds of methods were used to prepare wax-NFC composites. One way was wax and NFC were dissolved in toluene and casted to be a film, another way was to prepare NFC aerogel firstly, and then, impregnated the aerogel into wax liquid. After pressing it the structure was more compact. In order to characterize the properties of samples, SEM, XRD, TGA, DSC, Contact angle testing, tensile test and oxygen permeability methods were applied in.