A Possible Change For Agriculture

A new discovery in the growth of plants by Dr. Nick Pullen at John Innes Centre in the United Kingdom has given light on plant growth and possibly changed the way agricultural product may be obtained. The idea of optimal plant growth has always been to make sure the plant receives all necessities from water, nutrients, and sunlight to photosynthesize. Dr. Pullen has discovered that a plants genes may actually be the controlling factor of its net growth rate or lack there of. The main way genetics play a role in the plant growth is the regulation of their genetics and the rate of cell division occurring with the plants structure. A research project was conducted by altering growth repressors in the plant Arabidopsis. To measure photosynthesis rates and respiration they looked at the difference in metabolic rates of plant strains that were altered compared to ones that were not and looked at the rates of growth. This gave Dr Pullen a way to compare how certain genes in plants allowed their growth rates to be more productive than other types.