Environmental factors influencing the growth of plants

Alteration in any one of the environmental factors would be a limiting feature affecting the plant growth. These factors help in the distribution of plants geographically. For instance, plants that can grow with limited water can only adapt to the desert environment. Problems in plants also result from either direct or indirect environmental stress. Therefore, it is important to evaluate and understand the environmental factors that affect the plant growth. Most important of these environmental factors include water, nutrition, temperature and light. This article discusses the light.

Light

Light quantity - Three aspects of light that mostly affect the plant growth are quality, quantity and duration. The quantity of light in the form of the intensity of sunlight differs with various seasons of the year. Winter has less light intensity and summer has more intensity of light. If the plant is able to receive more sunlight, then it can prepare its food through photosynthesis efficiently. The photosynthetic process will get reduced with the reduction in the light intensity. In the greenhouse, light quantity can be reduced by providing shades to the plants while the increase of light can be provided by increasing the light reflecting surroundings for the plant.

Light quality – The wavelength and color of the light that reaches the plant surface represents the quality of light. The light spectrum of seven colors is visible when a ray of light passes through a prism. On the rainy day, the rain drop scatters the sun rays to create the rainbow. Green light is not considered as useful for the plant as it reflects most of it and do not absorb green. Blue light is seen absorbed by the plant and helps in the vegetative growth and leaf growth of the plant. Red and blue light in combination are found to be beneficial in flowering of plants. Cool white light or fluorescent light is known to be helpful in enhancing leaf growth. All the lights in the spectrum are known to be involved in the growth of the seedling.

Light duration – It is also called a photoperiod that represents the exposure time of the plant to the sunlight. Photoperiod was understood initially as the impact of the period of light on flowering. Different light periods were explained later as short-day and long-day. Later, it was discovered that it is not the light period that triggers flowering, it is the uninterrupted dark period that stimulates flowering. The flowering in the plants is influenced by the photoperiod. Plants can be categorized into three based on their flowering response to the dark period. These are short-day plants, long-day plants and day-neutral plants. Short-day plants will flower only when the length of the day is less than 12 hours. Long-day plants will flower only when the day light is greater than 12 hours of duration. 

Environmental factors influencing the growth of plants

Alteration in any one of the environmental factors would be a limiting feature affecting the plant growth. These factors help in the distribution of plants geographically. For instance, plants that can grow with limited water can only adapt to desert environment. Problems in plants also result from either direct or indirect environmental stress. Therefore, it is important to evaluate and understand the environmental factors that affect the plant growth. Most important of these environmental factors include water, nutrition, temperature and light. This article discusses about the light.

Light

Light quantity-Three aspects of light that mostly affect the plant growth are quality, quantity and duration. The quantity of light in the form of the intensity of sunlight differs with various seasons of the year. Winter has less light intensity and summer has more intensity of light. If the plant is able to receive more sunlight, then it can prepare its food through photosynthesis efficiently. Photosynthetic process will get reduced with reduction in the light intensity. In green house, light quantity can be reduced by providing shades to the plants, while increase of light can be provided by increasing the light reflecting surroundings for the plant.

Light quality –The wavelength and color of the light that reaches the plant surface represents the quality of light. Light spectrum of seven colours is visible when a ray of light passes through a prism. On the rainy day, the rain drop scatters the sun rays to create the rainbow. Green light is not considered as useful for the plant as it reflects most of it and do not absorb green. Blue light is seen absorbed by the plant and helps in the vegetative growth and leaf growth of the plant. Red and blue light in combination are found to be beneficial in flowering of plants. Cool white light or fluorescent light is known to be helpful in enhancing leaf growth. All the lights in the spectrum are known to be involved in the growth of the seedling.

Light duration –It is also called a photoperiod that represents the exposure time of the plant to the sunlight. Photoperiod was understood initially as the impact of period of light on flowering. Different light periods were explained later as short-day and long-day. Later, it was discovered that it is not the light period that triggers flowering, it is the uninterrupted dark period that stimulates flowering. The flowering in the plants is influenced by the photoperiod. Plants can be categorized into three based on their flowering response to the dark period. These are short-day plants, long-day plants and day-neutral plants. Short-day plants will flower only when the length of the day is less than 12 hours. Long-day plants will flower only when the day light is greater than 12 hours of duration.