Monday, March 3, 2014

Plants Tolerating Light

A new method of measuring the amount of light can tolerate has been found. According to scientists from Queen Mary University of London, this research could be particularly useful when growing plants to survive climate change. A changing climate means temperature fluctuations, change in humidity, drought, and fluctuation in light. The scientists relate the photoprotective capacity of the plant to the intensity of the light in its environment. To do this, they measure the fluorescence of the pigment chlorophyll. The pigment chlorophyll absorbs sunlight in the plant.



Erica Belgio, a scientist at Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Science, said that the plants varied in their capacity to protect them against intense light. The plants were gradually exposed to a greater intensity of light, and the responses were recorded. It was found that the plants that did not have the ability to respond quickly to high light intensity were worse at protecting themselves from damage. Professor Ruban, another scientist at Queen Mary's, compared the plants to the retina of the human eye, "It is sensitive to how much light can be soaked up" he said.

Themes of NOS: Science is based on evidence - the scientists first experimented with the intensity of light on the plants, and then drew conclusions about the plants.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140302195423.htm
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousMarch 3, 2014 at 4:45 PM

    With this information we can stop one factor of plants dying out due to climate change. Well this is all great and dandy what about the other factors? Also while this would help immensely in other ways like finding plants that can grow on other planets. Won't plants evolve. Won't they change with the climate? If plants are like retinas is there a physical reaction that the naked eye can't see that the plant uses to take in just the right amount of light. If this is true can we adjust lighting in other areas and lamps to be more beneficial to plant growth?

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  2. AnonymousMarch 3, 2014 at 6:28 PM

    How long did most of the plants take to adjust to the changing light intensity? And would the plants that could reacts to the light changing also be able to adapt if other factors changes with global climate change? If each plant could only adapt to one extreme change in what they were used to before would any of them survive? I think that the plants on this earth are very important and humans should take care of the earth that we have and be aware of what we are doing to it. The people in future generations will have to deal with the problems that we are creating. We are losing species of animals before we are able to discover them. Who knows there might be some amazing tree in the middle of some forest that we killed with climate change and we will never know about it.

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