242 PLANT GROWTH SUBSTANCES 



sale propagation of cacao, making it possible to plant thousands of acres 

 of young plants all with a proven record of high yield and quality 

 coupled with disease resistance; the use of 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic 

 acid as a weed killer in the sugar-cane industry, making it possible to 

 eradicate weeds which could not be conquered by hoe and machete. 



One may well ask what the future will bring. Here one has to dis- 

 tinguish between the immediate future and the years a generation or 

 more beyond that. In the immediate future we may expect that an 

 increasing number of uses will be found for plant hormones in the tropics. 

 Tropical agriculture is expanding as an inevitable result of an increased 

 world population. Plant hormone technology is also rapidly advancing. 

 In addition, fundamental knowledge is slowly but surely increasing in 

 the auxin field. 



The outlook for the remote future seems less bright. Here no specific 

 reference is made to plant hormones but to new applications of plant 

 physiological research in general. These applications, so new that one 

 cannot imagine them at present, depend invariably upon results obtained 

 in fundamental research, that type of research which is undertaken with 

 the sole aim of extending the horizons of our intellect. One could liken 

 the relation between applied and fundamental research to the relation 

 between logging operations and reforestation. The forests planted today 

 will yield forest products tomorrow. On examining what fundamental 

 research, of the type we are discussing, is being carried on today, we 

 cannot be over-optimistic as far as plant physiology is concerned. In 

 the tropics less fundamental research than ever is going on, even though 

 technological research there is flourishing. In the middle latitudes, once- 

 great European sources of knowledge have completely ceased to be 

 productive. In our own country, despite a veritable boom in technological 

 research, truly fundamental research in plant physiology is limited to a 

 relatively few institutions. There is danger, indeed, that in our great 

 desire for technological progress we are neglecting to nourish the source 

 of it all, thereby slowly starving the goose that laid the golden eggs. 



REFERENCES 



1. Avery, G. S. and Johnson, E. B., Hormones and Horticuhure (McGraw- 



Hill, 1947). 



2. Blondeau, R. and Crane, J. C, Science, 108:719 (1948). 



3. , Plant Physiol, 25:158 (1950). 



4. Bonner, J., Am. ]. Botany, 36:323 (1949). 



