Studies on antagonism.―I. The effect of the presence of salts of monovalent, divalent, and trivalent kations on the intake of calcium and ammonium ions by potato tuber tissue

Abstract

The intake of salts by storage tissues has been worked out at some length by Stiles using both the conductivity method and chemical analysis to determine the alteration in concentration of the solution supplied to the tissue. Results of these investigations as well as those of other workers on the subject point to the fact that salts are not taken in as such, but as their constituent ions, which may be absorbed to a very different degree. Stiles (1924) found that the ions were absorbed comparatively rapidly at first, for a period lasting up to 10 hours, after which there was a gradual falling off in the absorption rate so that after 24 hours absorption was only proceeding very slowly. It was also suggested that the initial rate of absorption depended more on the physical properties of the ions, such as their mobility and the coefficients of diffusion of their salts, and bore, it was found, no relationship to the final position of equilibrium (Stiles, 1919).