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Other Uses of Plant Hormones

  • Auxins are used to produce seedless fruit.
  • Ethene is used to promote fruit dropping in cotton, walnuts, cherries etc.
  • Cytokinins are used to prevent ageing of ripe fruit and to control tissue development in micropropagation.
  • Gibberellins are used to delay ripening and ageing in fruit, to speed up the malting process in beer brewing and to improve the shape and size of fruits.

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Specification: OCR Biology A (H420), A-level, 5.1.5 Plant and animal responses. Topic: Plant Responses.

Key terms in this lesson

Hormone
A chemical messenger, secreted directly into the blood by an endocrine gland, that travels to target cells and alters their activity.
Auxin
A plant hormone, produced mainly at shoot and root tips, that stimulates cell elongation and controls tropisms and apical dominance.
Gibberellin
A plant hormone that stimulates stem elongation and the breaking of seed dormancy and germination.
Electron transport chain
A series of protein complexes and electron carriers in the inner mitochondrial (or thylakoid) membrane that pass electrons along in redox reactions, releasing energy used to pump protons across the membrane.

More in Plant Responses

All 19 lessons in Plant Responses · All OCR A-level Biology topics