Techniques for using sprouts for potato production in the tropics
A series of experiments were conducted in Vietnam to develop a system whereby detached sprouts from physiologically old green sprouted seed tubers could be used to grow potatoes. Three node segments from the mid or basal portion of the detached sprout produced the greatest percentage of shoots and roots. Growth was best in a medium of equal parts of sub-soil, pig manure and brick kiln ash. Sprout cuttings produced plantlets ready for transplanting in 14–20 days with mean daily temperatures of 22 to 24°C. When transplanted in mid-November, yields from sprout cuttings in field experiments were 10 to 18 t/ha which were 33% lower than from healthy seed tubers but more than the national average yield using degenerated seed tubers. Tubers produced by plants grown from sprout stored well and gave good yields when replanted the following year.
Effects of growth regulators on the growth and yield of detached and transplanted potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) sprouts
SummaryRoots of 15-day-old sprouts detached from tubers of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) cv., Local Red, were dipped for 1 min in a 0.25% solution of Ethrel (ethephon), Rootone-F (RF), or Transplantone (TP) or in water and then planted in the field. Plants treated with RF and TP were significantly (P<0.05) taller, had heavier haulm, produced more leaves, and yielded more tubers than those of the control treatment with water, ethephon had no effect. RF was significantly (P<0.05) superior to TP for all measured components except leaf number.
Do Potential People Have Moral Rights?
By a potential person I shall mean an entity which is not now a person but which is capable of developing into a person, given certain biologically and/or technologically possible conditions. This is admittedly a narrower sense than some would attach to the term ‘potential'. After all, people of the twenty-fifth century, if such there will be, are in some sense potential people now, even though the specific biological entities from which they will develop, i.e. the particular gametes or concepti, do not yet exist. For there do exist, in the reproductive capacities of people now living and in the earth's resources, conditions adequate to produce these future people eventually, provided of course that various possible catastrophes are avoided. Indeed, in some sense of ‘potential’ there have been countless billions of potential people from the beginning of time. But I am concerned not with such remote potentialities but with currently existing entities that are capable of developing into people.