When fruits form, their seeds produce auxins, which prompt the growth and ripening of the fruit. Without the seeds (or the application of auxin – more on this later), the fruits would remain shrunken and inedible.
Αυξανω in Greek (‘increase’) gives us ‘auxin’ – a small class of molecules with a powerful ability to induce growth responses in plants. Plant growth is an irreversible increase in size, largely achieved by the enlargement of individual cells, which is driven by the uptake of water. Auxins are plant growth regulators (PGRs), involved in most of the growth changes that happen in plants (see Biological Sciences Review Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 20–21).
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