Why plants need sunlight

Prof. Dr. Hans Hckel, Weihenstephan, Germany

esides water and mineral nutrients, plants need light if they are to grow and flourish. That said, the Plant Kingdom ranges from true sun-worshippers to really shady characters with everything possible in between; but no plant can survive for long in the total absence of light. So if light is so important to plants, the obvious question arises what do they actually need it for? As you will see, light controls and indeed in many cases is essential for a whole range of physiological processes.

The most fundamental of all biochemical processes: photosynthesis

The first process that needs mentioning is photosynthesis, or assimilation. Photosynthesis allows plants to synthesize glucose from water and carbon dioxide, with the release of oxygen. The green plant pigment chlorophyll plays an important accessory role in this reaction. Glucose is the universal building block that the plant uses as the starting point for the synthesis of a vast range of further organic substances. Thus photosynthesis allows plants to use simple inorganic (i.e. not derived from living organisms) substances to build organic substances that are inseparable from life processes. The Animal Kingdom does not possess this capability animals are not able to create, from inorganic substances, the materials of which their bodies consist. This means that they have to consume organic materials. But all organic materials, whether in the form of animal flesh or plant tissues, derive in the end from photosynthesis. That is why this process is one of the most fundamental biochemical processes happening on the earth. Put simply, it guarantees the continued existence of life on our planet. The photosynthetic activity of the Plant Kingdom has another fascinating aspect: we now know that all of the oxygen present in the atmosphere today has been released,
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Photosynthesis, the most fundamental of life processes, occurs in chloroplasts within plant cells. These structures contain thylakoid membranes, which house the pigments necessary for photosynthesis.

Lettuce, cereals and carrot examples of crop plants that require light for germination. (f.l.t.r.)

Seeds of pumpkin, melon and cucumber only germinate in total darkness these species are negatively photoblastic.

over a period of 3,500 million years, as a product of plant photosynthesis. Without plants, there would be no oxygen in the earths atmosphere. Venus, our lifeless neighbour, has no oxygen in its atmosphere. In contrast, Mars, our other neighbour, has tiny traces of oxygen in its atmosphere. No wonder then that researchers around the world are feverishly working to find evidence of life there. But lets come back down to earth. Measuring the carbon content of sediment layers on the sea floor allows us to calculate how much organic material has been produced as the result of photosynthesis during the history of the earth. We can then further calculate how much oxygen would have been released as a result. The results of these calculations suggest that todays atmosphere contains only 5% of all of the oxygen ever produced. The rest is present elsewhere, in a chemically-bound state, as the result of various processes. Plants have indeed produced 20 times as much oxygen as we find in the atmosphere today a gigantic contribution. How plants use sunlight differs between individual plant species but all of them use it relatively inefficiently. The so-called C3 group of plants, to which most of our crop plants belong, scarcely manage to utilize more than 1 to 2% of incident light energy. They already reach their maximum performance at 25 to 30 % of the strength of sunlight on a (central European) high summer day. C4 plants of which maize is a well-known example - manage a little bit more: they reach peak performance only when the summer sunlight is at its most intense. But even they only manage to utilize at most 5 % of the incident energy from sunlight. For photosynthesis, plants use almost exclusively light in the blue and red parts of the spectrum. The green part is almost useless to them. This is why it is reflected, or allowed to pass through the leaves. And that, in turn, is the obvious explanation for why plants appear green to our eyes, even their transparent tissues.
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So light that has passed through a plant canopy still contains a lot of light at green wavelengths, but only small amounts of the red and blue wavelengths that are essential for photosynthesis. This means that it is almost unusable for any plants attempting to grow below the higher canopy. So plants situated below a thick canopy have little chance to grow; this also applies to weeds within a crop canopy. We can control weeds very well if we ensure that the crop establishes a well closed-over canopy.

Its all down to the sun: red-cheeked apples

Light is also needed for the production of various pigments. For example, apples only redden where they are lit by sunlight. The apple tree can only synthesize the red pigment with the help of light at the red and infra-red wavelengths, which is available in sunlight. You sometimes find an apple bearing the exact contours of the leaf that had been shading it from direct sunlight throughout the summer. This effect can also be achieved through a neat trick: if you stick little heart-shapes cut from non-translucent paper to an apple at the beginning of the reddening period, there will be no reddening under the hearts. If you then remove the paper in the autumn, you will have a red apple with a yellow heart-shaped imprint. Some clever advertising people have stuck material in the shape of their company logo onto the apples.

Light-loving and dark-loving seeds

The seeds of some plants only germinate when there is a certain minimum level of light available in the surroundings, in other words, when they find themselves directly below the soil surface, or at a shallow depth: in sandy soils, the layer five millimeters below the soil surface still receives 10 to 20% of the light incident on the soil surface. This type of behaviour is typical of species with very small seeds, which have few reserves for producing shoots. Were they to germinate in deeper soil layers, their shoot would not manage to grow the full distance to the surface. Plants that germinate like this are termed positively photoblastic. Crop plants belonging to this category include the grasses, lettuce, carrot and mustard. Many weeds are also positively photoblastic. Their seeds can enter a state of dormancy after being worked into the soil, or in the compost heap, coming unexpectedly to life again if the soil is turned over once more or if the compost is exposed to daylight. A mulch layer prevents this because it deprives them of the necessary light of course this also applies to all shading materials, such as bark chippings. For this reason, mulching can be a very useful strategy in agriculture, if you also consider its other positive effects on plant growth. A sufficiently closed-over crop canopy also brings darkness to the soil surface. For example, only a few percent of the light reaching a potato crop penetrates below the canopy. This means that positively photoblastic weeds have no chance of establishing. Often, however, a short burst of light can be enough to set off germination. Many farmers swear that cultivating the soil by night results in a much lower emergence of weeds than working by daylight; this could indeed have a physiological basis the short exposure to light that occurs with soil cultivation in daylight may be enough to set off germination in many

seeds, but they may remain unaffected in their dormant state if the cultivation is done at night. Other plants show quite the opposite in terms of germination behaviour: the seeds of melon, pumpkin and cucumber, for example, germinate only in absolute darkness. Correspondingly, they are termed negatively photoblastic. The germination of most crop plants, however, is unaffected by light levels in the immediate environment of the seed.

The struggle to reach the light: etiolation

Plants cannot live without light darkness is deadly for them! Any plant that finds itself in darkness will put all its resources into developing shoots in the search for light. This applies not only to mature plants, but also to germinating seeds and bulbs. Only when a well-lit environment has been reached does it make sense to unfold green leaves and start photosynthesizing. Until then, all of the plants strength must be put into achieving the rapidest growth possible. Stability and shape are secondary considerations during this perilous phase of development the main thing is to reach daylight as quickly as possible. This process is called etiolation. The etiolation that occurs when potato tubers kept in a darkened room start to germinate is impressive to observe. The tubers quickly develop white, leafless shoots, often several tens of centimeters long. These only start to produce leaves once they have reached a well-lit place. When growing white asparagus, the trick is artificially to encourage the growth of a long, leafless and very tender shoot; this is achieved by ridging to prolong the path to light. Endive also develops tender leaves containing relatively low levels of bitter substances if you bind the foliage together in a tuft.

Many arable crops are long-day plants

Many plant species only start to initiate flowers when there is daylight for at least 14 hours a day; for others, their readiness to flower is strongly encouraged by the availability of abundant light. These are termed long-day plants. But they dont have particularly high requirements 100 Lux (a level typically found in cloudless skies just after sunrise or just before sunset) is already sufficiently intense. In Central Europe, long-day conditions prevail from about the middle of April to the end of August. Further north, long-day conditions start earlier in the year because of the extended sunset, and last longer into the autumn; further south, its the other way around. Typical examples of long-day plants are: cereals, potato, oilseed rape, beets and turnip. Among horticultural crops, onion, lettuce, pea, fennel and spinach are longday plants. We want pea plants to flower profusely but we dont want fennel to flower at all. So peas are sown early in the year, but fennel is only sown when the days start to get shorter again, from the middle of July onwards. Flowering in spinach can also be suppressed by growing it either very early in the year, or in late summer. Chinese cabbage and Pak Choi also belong to this group: they only produce their attractive heads without flowering if they are grown in autumn, after the longday phase has ended. Nearly all summer

An apple with a heart: no reddening has occurred where a heart-shaped sticker was applied to the apple.

flowers behave in the same way. Fuchsia is an extreme example: it only really starts flowering intensively when there is light for 16 hours a day. There are also short-day plants, which either dont flower at all, or flower only weakly until the day is shorter than 14 hours. Strictly speaking, they dont react to the shorter day, but rather to the longer night. Examples of short-day agricultural crops include soybean, rice, sugar cane, coffee and tobacco. In horticulture, however, there are few examples beyond strawberry, Jerusalem artichoke and chrysanthemum. Sweet corn prefers short days for flowering. The best-known example among houseplants is the poinsettia. Finally, many plants are day-neutral, and day-neutral varieties of light-dependent species have also been bred. The reaction to day-length is the means by which plants have adapted to weather conditions in their original habitats. For example, in a climate with regular drought in summer, flowering should be induced under the long-day conditions of early summer so that seed-filling can take place before the dry period sets in. The mature seeds can then wait until the return of damp weather in autumn to germinate. In contrast, short-day plants seem to have become adapted to dry autumns: they develop under the damp summer conditions, so that flowering and seed-development are over before the dry period starts in the autumn. Besides the physiological processes discussed here, there are a large number of further, often very complex and sometimes not fully understood effects of light on plant growth and yield. But thats a story for another day. s

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