Date of Award:

5-1965

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Plants, Soils, and Climate

Department name when degree awarded

Plant Nutrition and Biochemistry

Committee Chair(s)

Gene W. Miller

Committee

Gene W. Miller

Committee

George W. Welkie

Committee

David R. Walker

Abstract

Many studies have been conducted on the effect of fluoride on plants, but the exact mechanisms by which fluoride causes damage is little understood. The following physiological and metabolic processes are known to be affected by fluoride: a decrease in chlorophyll (McNulty and Newman, 1961), a diminished rate of photosynthesis (Thomas and Hendricks, 1956; Bishop, et al., 1958), decreased plant growth (Bonner and Thimann, 1950), inhibition of ascorbic acid synthesis (Smith, 1952), variation in starch and total polysaccharides (Donald and Emerson, 1961), inhibition of glucose transport (Jiri, et al., 1962), inhibition of metabolism (Ordin and Skoe, 1963), effects on the respiration (Bonner, 1948; McNulty and Newman, 1956; McNulty and Newman, 1957; Hill, et al., 1959; Applegate and Adams, 1960; Yu and Miller, 1964), and collapsed spongy mesophyll and lower epidermal cells followed by distortion and chloroplast disruption in the palisade cells (Adams and Solberg, 1956). Ledbetler et al., (1960) studied the distribution of radioactive fluorine-18 in tomato plants. Zimmerman and Hitchcock (1946) studied fluorine compounds given off by plants. Several investigators have studied the inhibition of aconitase by fluoride, or its relation to acetyl CoA and citric acid (Buffa et al., 1951; Peters and Wilson, 1952; Morrison and Peters, 1954; Brady, 1955; Gal et al., 1956; Peters and Wakelin, 1957; Gal, 1960).

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