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The mechanism of stomatal movement—Once more

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Summary

The recent explosion of information on stomatal action has led to a rejection of the old, classical theory of the mechanism, proposed byScarth (1932) and its replacement byFujino's (1959) concept of active K+ transport. Many of the new facts, however, do not seem to fit into either concept, and neither provides a sufficiently detailed, step-by-step scheme to account for all the known facts. Enough information is now available for the proposal of a new scheme which embodies the best features of each of the above and eliminates the inadequacies of both.

There are five main kinds of stomatal movement: 1. photoactive opening, 2. hydroactive opening, 3. hydroactive closing, 4. scotoactive closing, and 5. scotoactive opening. The hydroactive opening and closing, in principle, are simply due to the passive flow of water along activity gradients and, therefore, do not require theoretical analysis. Any theory of stomatal movement, to be fully adequate, must provide a sound, step-by-step explanation for all the remaining three kinds of movement.

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Author notes

  1. J. Levitt

    Present address: Institute of Soils and Water, Agric. Res. Org., The Volcani Center, P.O.B. 6, Bet Dagan, Israel

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA

    J. Levitt

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Levitt, J. The mechanism of stomatal movement—Once more. Protoplasma 82, 1–17 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01276868

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01276868

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