CATALASE-CHLOROPHYLL RELATIONSHIP IN BARLEY SEEDLINGS

For over two decades H. VON EULER (3) and his coworkers have studied the relationship of catalase to chlorophyll. In their work they utilized various chlorophyll defective plants including genetic albinos, variegated, chlorotic and etiolated plants. In general, they found a parallelism between chlorophyll content and catalase activity. NAKAMURA (11) working with a number of higher and lower forms of photosynthesizing organisms came to the same conclusions. Our observations on this problem agree in a general way with the above authors with one important exception, namely, the catalase-chlorophyll relationships in etiolated seedlings. EULER and his coworkers (4) have reported that catalase activity in etiolated seedlings of barley, rye, wheat and oats are generally lower than in green seedlings. We found that the catalase activity in etiolated seedlings of the above species is consistently and significantly higher than in green seedlings. It is primarily with this phase of the problem that the present paper is concerned.