PHYSIOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES AND CONTROL OF PLANT TISSUE CULTURE AND SEEDLING CULTURE SYSTEMS FOR PLANT GROWTH FACTORIES.

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Plant growth factories will be the next generation agricultural cultivation system in which plant seedlings will be grown efficiently by using advanced industrialized techniques. In order to operate such a plant growth factory, it is essential to monitor physiological conditions of plants grown in the plant growth factory. In the present project, mechanisms of physiological control for plant growth were studied to select physiological parameters which were useful to monitor physiological conditions of plants grown in the plant growth factories. Plant seedlings were grown from seeds or tissue-cultured plantlets. When cell expansion rates were measured in plantlets grown under tissue-cultured conditions or seedlings grown in hydroponic culture, cell expansion rates were proportional to the size of the water potential gradient between expanding cells and the water source. The water potential gradient associated with growth is called the growth-induced water potential. Although growth could be inhibited by low temperature,high temperature,high concentrations of salt,deficiency of nutrients,rates of cell expansion under such conditions were related to the size of the growth-induced water potential. This indicates that the growth-induced water potential could be used as a physiological parameter to estimate growth rates of plants grown in plant growth factories. However, measurements of the size of the growth-induced water potential cannot be made practically without damaging plants grown in plant growth factories. When growth rates could be monitored by image analysis and concentrations of culture media could be measured, the growth-induced water potential could be estimated by using the artificial intelligence computer which could contain physiological information in its memory in advance.