Potent Plant Stimulant Has Remarkable Effects

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28370, 31 August 1957, Page 13

Potent Plant Stimulant Has Remarkable Effects

(Rec. 7 p.m.) STANFORD (California). August 29.

Scientists have reported on experiments with a. potent new chemical that revived diseased plants and caused potatoes to sprout one or two weeks early. This chemical is gibbetellic acid, made by a fungus called gibberella fujikurbi. Ifi amounts of one miUionth of an ounce in an ounce of .water, the scientists said it made some plants grow three times taller than untreated ones in a few weeks.

IThe chemical was developed by Japanese scientists who isolated a growth-stimulating substance in 1938. TTiis was as a result of a rice disease and the identification of* the fungus In the soil. Several chemical firms in the United States and Imperial Chemical Industries in Britain have tested the chemical and it. hat been used by the grasslands diVision of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in New Zealand since last summer. It has been used as a tool to study plant growth. The director of the division (Dr. P. Sears) said recently in Palmerston North that it had been used in particular to study the growth of grass- <“We hope that in this way our research into facial eczema in sheep will be stimulated,” he said.] Researchers at the University of California's agricultural school at Davis, said that seed potatoes given a five-minute bath in a gibberellin solution could begin to sprout on 4 br two week’s early Biit so potent is the chemical, that direct treatment of the tubfers might not be necessary.

They told the American Institute of Biological Sciences that Gibberellin sprays applied to plant faliage as much as seven weeks before harvest could break the dormancy for many of the potatoes grown on the treated plants. .Earlier this week. Dr. Karl Maramorosch of the Rockefeller Institute in New York reported that he applied gibberellic acid to maize plants, asters, and clover severely stunted by virus diseases. “When gibberellic acid was sprayed at 100 parts a million on the leaves of diseased plants, and this treatment was repeated twice at weekly intervals, a striking response was obtained.” he said.

Dr. Maramorosch said that the stems and leafstalks became

strong and erect, elongating themselves at least twice as much. “Stunting could thus be overcome to a considerable degree, although the plants retained other signs of virus infection,” he said. Small supplies of gibberellic acid might be available to farmers within two years» according to the research centre of 1.C.1. at Hertfordshire, England. Dr; P. W. Brain, one of the scientists working on the stimulant, said that in experiments, tomatoes had been made to yield more and bigger fruit, dwarf beans had grown as big as cucumbers. marrows had become almost too heavy to lift ans cabbages had grown 12 feet high“The chemical has. remarkable qualities/’ he said- “But we must Ifearn to control it before it can reach the market.”