Vol. 43 TORREYA December 1943 



Plants Need Vitamins Too* 



William J. Robbins 



Thirty years ago when I first became interested in the nutrition of the 

 fungi the failure of a fungus to grow or grow well in a medium of known com- 

 position was ascribed to a variety of causes, none accounting satisfactorily for 

 the results. Mycologists recognized that many fungi required special media 

 containing some material of natural origin ; and oatmeal, corn meal, potatoes, 

 bean pods, extract of malt, peptone, wood, dung and many other natural prod- 

 ucts w^ere frequently used as such or incorporated in the material upon which 

 these organisms were grown. Generally speaking, an effort was made to supply 

 as food the material on which the organism grew in nature. 



The advantage of such natural media was not understood. Some suggested 

 that it was because of the suitability of the minerals in the natural product, or 

 its favorable acidity or alkalinity, to the presence of a particular carbohydrate 

 or some unique source of organic nitrogen, to the special water relations 

 afforded by the material or to some physical property. We know now that the 

 growth of many fungi is conditioned by the presence in the medium of minute 

 traces of specific organic compounds, some of them identical with the known 

 vitamins ; and the presence of these growth substances in products of natural 

 origin frequently accounts for their advantages as cukure media. This was a 

 possibility seriously considered by few, if any, of those concerned with the 

 cultivation of fungi thirty years ago. In fact, the very word vitamin was un- 

 known at that time; it was coined by Casimir Funk in 1912 and up to eight 

 years ago not a single completely convincing example of the importance of a 

 vitamin for a plant could be cited. 



During the period from 1912-1934 the animal physiologist proceeded to 

 demonstrate the importance of vitamins for the growth and well-being of ani- 

 mals and to explore their multiplicity, functions, sources and chemistry. It 

 was generally agreed that plants were the sources from which animals in the 

 last analysis obtained their vitamins, or in other words, that plants made vita- 

 mins and animals used them, a fortunate circumstance for us and a sort of 

 philanthropic activity on the part of plants. But the possibility that vitamins 

 were important in the metabolism of the plant itself was regarded by the ma- 

 jority of plant physiologists with concealed or open scepticism. In fact, a com- 

 plete and satisfactory demonstration of the importance of vitamins for plants ; 

 waited, as so frequently happens in science, on advances in another field, on 

 the isolation of a vitamin in chemically pure form. Crystalline thiamine (vita- 



* Delivered at the 75th Anniversary Celebration of the Torrey Botanical Club at the 

 American Museum of Natural History, Wednesday evening, June 24, 1942. 



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