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Cyclic Lighting for Promotion of Flowering of Sweetclover, Melilotus alba Desr. 1
Author(s) -
Kasperbauer M. J.,
Borthwick H. A.,
Cathey H. M.
Publication year - 1963
Publication title -
crop science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.76
H-Index - 147
eISSN - 1435-0653
pISSN - 0011-183X
DOI - 10.2135/cropsci1963.0011183x000300030016x
Subject(s) - melilotus , library science , promotion (chess) , citation , original research , biology , botany , political science , computer science , law , politics
PHOTOPERIODIC control of flowering of longand short-day plants is essential in many crop research programs. The controlling photo reactions have the same action spectra and, therefore, are the same even though the responses of the two kinds of plants are opposite (8). Several investigators (1, 7, 9) showed that for both longand short-day plants a short exposure to low-intensity light was more effective near the middle than at the beginning or the end of the night. In general, however, long-day plants seem to require longer dark-period interruptions than do short-day plants for effective control of flowering. Chrysanthemum, a short-day plant, resembles a number of longday plants in that dark-period interruptions with incandescent-filament light adequate to control flowering must be for a few hours instead of a few minutes. In recent work with chrysanthemum light given intermittently in short light-dark cycles (a procedure called cyclic lighting) during a period of several hours in the middle of the night proved as inhibitory to flowering as light given continuously during the same period (4).