Description
Fall 2018: From the Editor's Desk - Bal Ram Singh
Fall is the time to prepare for winter plans, but with celebrations of holidays the world over on one pretext or another. As obvious with fall colors of leaves, the plants have learned over a long period of evolution to attract attention even as they shed their productive leaves. This they do by sacrificing their workhorse green pigments, the chlorophylls first, thus allowing the other pigments – carotenoids, anthocyanins – to be seen in prominence. Carotenoids and anthocyanins are always there as accessory pigments, essential for the harvesting of solar energy to be used in photosynthesis. But their presence is masked by chlorophyll. Incidentally, these accessory pigments appear first in the spring and help guide even the synthesis of chlorophyll. (cont)
