Science: Plant Hormones

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Meanwhile at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research investigators had been observing the effect on plants of certain gases such as ethylene, acetylene, carbon monoxide. These effects in some ways were similar to those produced by the plant hormones. Eastman Kodak Co. was selling a near chemical kin of heteroauxin—indole-3n-propionic acid. The Boyce Thompson chemist thought he might be able to convert one to the other. Before he started, however, Drs. P. W. Zimmerman and A. E. Hitchcock tried out the indole-3n-propionic acid itself. To their unbounded delight, it produced nearly the same phenomena as a plant hormone. Promptly they began experiments with some 30 other likely sub-stances—not hormones—such as naphthalene acids and indole derivatives. About half of these disclosed some form of hormonic activity.

In this instance, the lag of commercial exploitation behind laboratory research was remarkably short. Indolebutyric acid, one of the Boyce Thompson stimulants, has already been placed on the market by several manufacturers as a root stimulator for cuttings. Merck Chemical Co. sells it as "Hormodin A" at a price of $2 for 15 cubic centimetres, which, diluted upwards of 6,000 times, is enough for about 1,500 cuttings. Pennsylvania Chemical Corp. markets it under the name of "Auxilin" at a price of $1 per half ounce. The prospect is that in ten years the nurseryman who neglects to stimulate his cuttings with root activators will be as old-fashioned as a railroad with wood-burning locomotives.