Light Measurements in Plant Growth Investigations

Abstract

PROF. HEATH raises the fundamental question of the purpose of making light measurements, and I am happy to give my point of view. I think that it will eventually be possible to predict the growth rates of plants from measurements on their environments, given sufficient understanding of the principles behind the interactions between plant and environment. The models will have to be complex, because plants are complex, but this presents no difficulty to an electronic computer. The limitation is not in our ability to speculate, but in our ability to describe the principles of plant behaviour in numbers rather than in words.