Respiration and Embryogenesis in Cotton

Abstract

Virtually nothing is known about the metabolism associated with embryogenesis in higher plants, not even the oxidative pathways involved in respiration. This contrasts sharply with the situation in the field of animal embryology where a large amount of data dealing with the biochemistry of embryo development has been collected (3). When embryogenesis is defined as the result of maintenance, growth, and differentiation (3), it becomes increasingly apparent that it is important to understand the basic respiratory pathways operating, in embryos and to examine the possibility of pathway changes during the course of development. The experiments described below are concerned with the relation of respiration to development of the plant embryo. Three areas investigated were 1) the normal respiration of the plant embryo, 2) the characterization of the oxidative pathway involved in respiration through the use of respiratory enzyme inhibitors, and 3) the histochemical localization of relative respiratory activities during tbe early stages of embryogenesis.