Blocking a growth hormone makes arrowhead produce bigger edible corms
Liu J, Ding W, Fan Q, Jin S, Chang H
Crop Improvement
If you grow arrowhead or taro-family vegetables in a water garden, keeping the plants shorter with a hormone inhibitor could meaningfully increase the size of the starchy corms you harvest.
Arrowhead is an aquatic plant grown for its starchy underground bulbs, similar to water chestnuts. Scientists tested what happens when you apply gibberellin, a natural hormone that makes plants grow taller, versus a chemical that blocks it. Spraying the blocker kept the plants short and caused them to put more energy into forming larger, meatier bulbs underground.
Key Findings
GA3 (gibberellin) treatment significantly increased plant height and reduced underground corm size compared to controls.
Paclobutrazol (a gibberellin inhibitor) had the opposite effect: shorter plants and larger corms.
Cell-level analysis showed GA3 caused elongation of petiole epidermal and parenchyma cells, explaining the height increase; gene expression of four GA-related genes (StKS1, StKS2, StKS3, StGA3ox) changed significantly under both treatments.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Researchers found that the plant hormone gibberellin controls a direct trade-off in arrowhead (water arrowhead): more of it means taller plants but smaller edible corms underground, while blocking it does the opposite. Growers can use this knowledge to tune plant height and boost the yield of the starchy corms people eat.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Effect of gibberellin on the growth and corm formation of Sagittaria trifolia.
Gibberellins (GAs) are crucial growth regulators governing diverse plant developmental processes. Arrowhead (Sagittaria trifolia L.) is a characteristic aquatic vegetable with a tall plant type and...
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An arrowhead or point is the usually sharpened and hardened tip of an arrow, which contributes a majority of the projectile mass and is responsible for impacting and penetrating a target, or sometimes for special purposes such as signaling.