Regulation of Flowering

Regulation of Flowering

  • Submitted By: Mountaineer
  • Date Submitted: 01/31/2009 11:58 AM
  • Category: Science
  • Words: 873
  • Page: 4
  • Views: 1

Regulation of Flowering
Plants are able to respond to a wide variety of environmental situations because they have systems for monitoring important environmental factors and they have programmed patterns of response to these stimuli. The influence of one part of a plant is important in keeping the plant growing consistently. The correlation of activities in one part with another may be through food, mineral nutrients, and water supplies, or by the production and distribution of specific hormones.
Some environmental factors that influence plant growth and development would be light, temperature, water, and gases. Sunlight of course is the main source of energy for photosynthesis and other plant processes. The angle of incidence of sunlight has two major effects on crop growth. First, light intensity is directly related to crop productivity. As light intensity increases, so does photosynthetic activity until the photosynthetic machinery is saturated. Typically photosynthetic activity is fairly tightly correlated with the daily change in the sun’s altitude. So therefore, photosynthetic rates are low at dawn, they peak around noon, and they gradually decline as the day progresses toward sunset. Not only does the angle of incidence affect the intensity of light, it also affects the amount of light entering the leaf and available for absorption by chlorophyll. Light also affects plant growth and development through photomorphogenesis. This process describes several highly integrated processes that are regulated to produce the shape or form of the plant. They include seed germination in light-sensitive seeds, the greening of young seedlings once they emerge from the soil (de-etiolation), and the stem growth in plants competing for light with other plants. Most photomorphogenic responses are fully induced by light intensities that are below the compensation point of photosynthesis. These photomorphogenic responses are regulated by the phytochrome pigment system. This...

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