Plants and gravity. Special issue

This issue of the Journal of Plant Growth Regulation explores the effects of gravity on plant growth and development from several perspectives. Most of the review papers consider plants and gravity from the viewpoint of ground-based laboratory research, and several papers consider gravitropism, the directed growth in response to gravity, in some detail. However, another approach to study the effects of gravity on plant is to effectively remove the force due to gravity. A very dramatic way to accomplish this goal is through the free-fall conditions achieved by spacecraft in low Earth orbit, so some of the authors have reviewed recent advances in spaceflight research with plant systems.