Changes in Transpiration induced by Ethyl Alcohol

ETHYL alcohol was used as an auxiliary solvent in the preparation of auxin solutions for a series of transpiration experiments with plants in water culture when the roots were supplied with different auxins at varying concentrations. This method appears to be fairly common for auxin studies1,2. After weighing, the auxin is dissolved in a small quantity of ethyl alcohol, and the resulting solution is diluted with water or a nutrient solution to obtain the concentration desired. The small amounts of alcohol used are usually considered to be harmless; nevertheless, it has been shown that ethyl alcohol may have modifying effects in auxin experiments even at low concentrations3. In an attempt to determine whether this is also the case in transpiration experiments, some experiments were carried out with nutrient solution to which had been added varying amounts of ethyl alcohol.