FLOW OF INFORMATION AS RELATED TO FLOWERING PROCESSES

The aim of may talk is not to give a review on growth regulators in flowering processes; I would like to put forward some views and ideas concerning the functioning of plant organisms, views which are not sufficiently dealt with in physiological literature.

1. All living units are interconnected by information.
   Flow of information is responsible not only for the functioning of any organism, but for the functioning of the whole ecosystem in general.

   Under,,information” we understand here a properly formed energomatter which is emitted by one system and can be received, amplified, translated and converted into a proper function in the receiving system.

2. Information transferred within the living plant might be of hormonal in nature, might be based on flow of electric currents, emission or modulation of light, or may possess another physical status/changes of pressure within the vascular system, wave-like changes in membranes-see Fig.1-etc.

3. In order to carry any information the energomatter must be properly organized in space and time.

   The following situations might be easily foreseen:

   1. The carrier of the message might be sequentially present or absent /schematically: 0 1 0 1 0 1 …/;

   2. The carrier of the message is arranged in the form of a gradient /schematically: 8 7 6 5 6 7 …/;

   3. The message consists of a sequence of different carriers /schematically; A B C A …/;

   4. The message is coded in a mixture of carriers and its composition, a proper ,,cocktail”, is responsible for any physiological response/schematically: A:B:C:…:C:D:…/.

   5. All listed above versions may function simultaneously.

4. The simplest informational system consists of three fundamental elements /see Fig. 2 /:

1. Emitter of information;

2. Channel of information;

3. Receptor of information.

The emitter must be furnished with a proper substrate of message, must possess a proper releasing mechanism for the message, and a modulating system for dressing the energomatter into a proper shape, as discussed in 3.

The channel of information must possess proper physical form /e.g. anatomical construction, molecular composition, submolecular structure/; must be able to protect the message from destruction and from overpowering by informational noise; must possess a proper mechanism responsible for polar transfer of the message.

Symposium on Growth Regulators in Floriculture

R. Antoszewski

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1979.91.2