PLANTS use alarm clocks too, it seems, and we may one day be able to set the time of the wake-up call. Genes have been discovered that trigger a plant’s growth spurt just before dawn and by tweaking them it may be possible to engineer crops that grow for longer every day and so produce bigger yields.
The timing of the early-morning growth spurt is choreographed by a plant’s circadian “clock”, which is reset by changes in light at dawn and dusk. The clock dictates when most physiological processes happen throughout the day, such as the uptake of water and…
