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Photocontrol of Anthocyanin Synthesis

VII. Factors Affecting the Spectral Sensitivity of Anthocyanin Synthesis in Young Seedlings ¹

^a Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University in the City of New York, New York 10027

Light-dependent anthocyanin synthesis is a typical high irradiance response (HIR) of plant photomorphogenesis. The spectral sensitivity of this response in young seedlings of cabbage and tomato is strongly affected by the length and mode of application of the light treatments. This observation suggests that the different experimental conditions, used in different action spectroscopy studies, might have been responsible, at least in part, for some of the reported differences in the characteristics of the HIR action spectra of different response-system combinations. In both cabbage and tomato, the values of the far red/blue, far red/red, and blue/red action ratios increase with increasing durations of the light treatments; this finding is in agreement with hypotheses of K. M. Hartmann (1966, 1967) and E. Schäfer (1975) for phytochrome action in the HIR. The similarity in the trend of change of the values of the action ratios suggests the possibility that the photomorphogenic pigment system, involved in the photoregulation of anthocyanin synthesis, may be the same in cabbage and tomato, even though there are some differences in the spectral sensitivity of the response between the two species.