Ch 13Plant Growth and Development — Class 11 Biology, concept-first.

Germination is the sequence of physiological events by which a mature, viable seed -- until now metabolically quiescent -- resumes active growth and gives rise to a self-sustaining seedling.

Growth, in the strict physiological sense used throughout plant biology, is an irreversible, permanent increase in the size of a cell, an organ, or the whole plant, and it is measured in a variety of…

Growth does not occur automatically simply because a plant's cells retain the biochemical capacity for it; a set of favourable external conditions must also be met, and if any one of them falls outsid…

As cells produced by root apical, shoot apical and lateral (cambial) meristems move away from the actively dividing zone, most of them undergo differentiation -- a set of structural and biochemical ch…

Development is the term used to describe everything a plant does, over its life, to build its final form and function -- formally, it is the sum of growth (an irreversible increase in size) and differ…

Plant growth regulators (PGRs), also called phytohormones, are small, chemically diverse organic molecules that a plant synthesises in tiny amounts and that, even at very low concentration, regulate i…

Auxin's discovery began with a simple observation Charles Darwin made together with his son Francis: the coleoptile of a canary-grass seedling, when lit from one side only, bends toward the light, but…

Cytokinin's discovery grew out of plant tissue-culture research led by F. Skoog and his co-workers, who were searching for a chemical factor able to induce cultured plant cells to divide (undergo cyto…

Photoperiodism is the phenomenon by which a plant's physiological responses -- most conspicuously, the induction of flowering -- are regulated by the relative duration of light and darkness it experie…

This chapter traced the journey of a plant from a dormant seed to a mature, developed individual capable of flowering.