Structure and Function of Roots

Book excerpt: In 1971, the late Dr. J. Kolek of the Institute of Botany, Bratislava, organized the first International Symposium devoted exclusively to plant roots. At that time, perhaps only a few of the participants, gathered together in Tatranska Lomnica, sensed that a new era of root meetings was beginning. Nevertheless, it is now clear that Dr. Kolek's action, undertaken with his characteristic enormous enthusiasm, was rather pioneering, for it started a series a similar meetings. Moreover, what was rather exceptional at the time was the fact that the meeting was devoted to the functioning of just a single organ, the root. One possible reason for the unexpected success of the original, perhaps naive, idea of a Root Symposium might lie with the fact that plant roots have always been extremely popular as experimental material for cytologists, biochemists and physiologists whishing to probe processes as diverse as cell division and solute transport. Of course, the connection of roots with the rest of the plant is not forgotten either. This wide variety of disciplines is now coupled with the development of increasingly sophisticated experimental techniques to study some of these old problems. These factors undoubtedly contribute to the necessity of continuing the tradition of the root symposia. The common theme of root function gives, in addition, a certain unity to all these diverse activities.