Gibberellic Acid In Fruits - Essay Example

These enzymes include cytochrome P450 monooxygenases, terpene synthases (TPSs) and 2-oxoglutarate-dependent dioxygenases (2ODDs). It is used in the enlargement of ovary without any effect on the underlying ovary structure. Commercially, Gibberellins is used in Grapes farming to promote the growth of a variety of fruit crops. The effects of plant hormones are complicated biologically and biochemically hence they are not fully understood because of their unique effects on different plants. Gibberellins also known as gibberellic acids were first discovered by Eiichi Kurosawa, a Japanese scientist while investigating bakanae, the “foolish seedling” infection in rice (Yeoshua, 2005).

The United States developed the interest about gibberellins after the Second World War. The Japanese rice farmers had long known of ‘foolish seedling’ a fungal disease that causes rice plants to grow taller and eliminate seed production. Later, the plant pathologists established that these symptoms in rice plant were induced by a chemical secreted by a pathogenic fungus, Gibberella fujikuroi. Japanese scientists started culturing this fungus in the laboratory and analyzing the culture filtrate in 1930s that enabled them to obtain impure crystal of two fungal “compounds” possessing plant growth promoting activity (Thompson, 2008).

Teijiro Yabuta and Sumuki named one of these compounds gibberellin A because they isolated it from the fungus Gibberella. In 1950s scientists from Tokyo, University isolated and classified three different gibberellins from gibberellin A sample, which he named them gibberellin A1, gibberellin A2 and gibberellin A3 (Cline & Trought, 2007). This system for numbering gibberellins used in the past 50 years was based on this initial nomenclature of gibberellins A1 (GA1), GA2, and GA3. Gibberellins (GAs) are