Environmental Factors Affecting Plant Tissue Cultures
Richard R. Williams
Environmental factors have many effects on plant growth and development. Indeed, plant propagators often take great care in managing the nursery environment to optimise plant propagation and growth. The environment includes physical or chemical (abiotic) and biotic components. In the nursery the biotic factors include not only insects and microorganisms but also other plants, including weeds. What may be less obvious in the nursery is that plants in turn may affect their environment. This interaction between the plant and its environment is the scientific discipline of "ecology." The main message of this paper is that plants growing in plant tissue culture (or in vitro) are also subject to these same interactions, hence the research field of "in vitro ecology." In this short paper I am going to focus on two aspects of the culture environment, light and gas exchange (ventilation).
Light can be described and measured by several characteristics, each having various effects on
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