Jan Ingenhousz

Jan Ingenhouz took Priestley’s work further and demonstrated that it was light that plants
needed to make oxygen (oxygen was discovered a few years earlier, in 1772 byCarl Wilhelm
Scheele). Ingenhousz was mistaken in believing that the oxygen made by plants came from
carbon dioxide. 

However, Jan Ingenhousz was the first person to show that light is essential to the plant process
that somehow purifies air fouled by candles or animals. 

In 1779 Ingenhousz put a plant and a candle into a transparent closed space. He allowed the
system to stand in sunlight for two or three days. This assured that the air inside was pure
enough to support a candle flame. But he did not lit the candle. Then, he covered the closed
space with a black cloth and let it remain covered for several days. When he tried to light the
candle it would not light. 

Ingenhousz concluded that somehow the plant must have acted in darkness like an animal. It
must have breathed, fouling the air. And in order to purify the air plants need light.

As Ingenhousz was performing his experiments, the celebrated French chemist Antoine
Lavoisier (1743-1794) disproved the phlogiston theory. He conclusively demonstrated that
candles and animals both consume a gas in the air which he named oxygen. This implied that
the plants in Priestley's and Ingenhousz's experiments produced oxygen when illuminated by
sunlight. Considered by many as the founder of modernchemistry, Lavoisier was condemned to
death and beheaded during the French revolution.

Lavoisier's experiments stimulated Ingenhousz to reinterpret his earlier studies of

"dephlogistation." Following Lavoisier, Ingenhousz hypothesized that plants use
sunlight to split carbon dioxide (CO 2) and use its carbon (C) for growth while expelling
its oxygen (O2) as waste. This model of photosynthesis was an improvement over
Priestley's, but was not entirely accurate.

Ingenhousz's hypothesis that photosynthesis produces oxygen by splitting carbon

dioxide was refuted about 150 years later by the Dutch-born microbiologist Cornelius
van Niel (1897-1985) in America. Van Niel studied photosynthesis inanaerobicbacteria,
rather than in higher plants. Like higher plants, these bacteria
makecarbohydratesduring photosynthesis. Unlike plants, they do not produce oxygen
during photosynthesis and they use bacteriochlorophyll rather than chlorophyll as a
photosynthetic pigment. Van Niel found that allspeciesof photosynthetic bacteria which
he studied required an oxidizable substrate.

Julius Von Sachs

Pada pertengahan abad ke-19 J. Sachs, dengan beberapa pemikiran kontemporernya,
tertarik dengan nutrient minimal yang dibutuhkan oleh tanaman.

Diakui, ini memang sulit untuk mempelajari hal yang sekompleks mempelajari tanah,
Sachs melakukan eksperimen yang menggunakan beberapa akar tanaman yang
ditumbuhkan dalam media yang bukan tanah tetapi dalam media air yang mengandung
garam mineral. Dengan sistem yang sederhana ini, Sachs dapat mendemonsrasikan
pertumbuhan tanaman hingga matang pada larutan nutrien yang mengandung enam
garam inorganik (Tabel 4.1). variasi pada percobaan Sachs dikenal sebagai hidroponik
(menumbuhkan tanaman dalam nutien cair), prinsip eksperimen ini sekarang
digunakan untuk mempelajari nutrisi yang dibutuhkann oleh tanaman. Hidroponik juga
sukses digunakan dalam produksi tanaman komersial seperti letus, toamt, dan
mentimun.

Tabel 4.1 Komposisi Nutrien Cair Sachs (1860) digunakan sebagai media tanam

Garam Formula Konsentrasi (mM)

Potassium nitrat KNO3 9,9

Kalsium fosfat Ca3(PO4)2 1,6

Magnesium sulfat MgSO4.7H2O 2,0

Kalsium sulfat CaSO4 3,7

Sodium klorida NaCl 4,3

Besi sulfat FeSO4 trace

Engelmann