Abstract
Morphological measurements were made on populations of Arabidopsis thaliana grown from seed for 21 days under essentially constant environmental conditions except for the influence of gravitational or centrifugal accelerations. Growth conditions were what had been proposed for experiments in an artificial satellite. Observations are reported for plants grown at normal 1-g upright or on horizontal clinostats and for plants grown on a centrifuge. Increased g-force, up to 15 times normal, was found to have significant but small effects on some morphological end points. The plants' sensitivity to the magnitude of the g-force was much less than to its vector direction.
Data from centrifuge experiments (which determined the g-functions for particular characters) were extrapolated to zero-g to predict a set of morphological characteristics of a plant developing in the satellite environment. As an alternative means of predicting properties of a zero-g plant, characteristics of plants grown on horizontal clinostats were measured. The results of these two predictive methods were not in agreement.
Clinostat grown plants were morphologically distinct from upright stationary controls. When plants were grown while rotating in the upright position on vertical clinostats they were similar to stationary plants also grown upright, but there were small differences some of which were statistically significant.
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Selected References
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