Agriculture and Methanol

Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California Deepak Nair 

Agricultural resources are limited and the buttoning pressures of massive increases in the population of the world drive competition for them by urban and mral sites. Thus, as the stewards of the land are gving way to the encroachment of territory by urban requirements, agriculture is met with the challenge of increasing the efficiency of production with fewer raw materials. Technologies to improve the efficiency of photosynthetic production that have been in- 

Methanol is a concentrated liquid source of carbon for plants, but only very low concentrations (usually less than 1% methanol) were previously utilized in laboratory studies, higher concentrations generally having been found to be toxic to plant tissues. As a carbon nutrient source for plants, application of 1% methanol to crops is not economically feasible, but if a method existed by which the 

The methanol molecule is smaller than carbon dioxide and penetrates most plant tissues quickly for rapid metabolism. As a plant source of carbon, methanol is a liquid concentrate 1 cc methanol provides the equivalent fixed-carbon substrate of over 2,000,000 cc of ambient air. Methanol absorbed by foliage is metabolized to carbon dioxide, amino acids, sugars, and other structural components. Two major paths of methanol metabolism are the internal production of carbon dioxide that is then utilized in photosynthesis and the incorporation of methanol as a fixed source of carbon. Briefly stated in field terms, methanol treatments are a means of placing carbon directly into the foliage. Hi li t intensity is necessary to drive photosynthesis at the rates necessary to process the high internal levels of carbon dioxide presented by methanol. Serine formation and carbon dioxide fixation by photosynthesis may lead to the production of su. Increases of su concentration in the presence of moisture lead to increased turgidity. 

Methanol treatments of C3 plants have been found to result in growth improvements, but methanol on C4 plants does not enhanee growth. This observation is consistent with the inhibition of photorespiration by methanol sinee C4 plants have very low rates of photorespiration under high light intensities. 

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