I am honored by the editor's invitation to write a Preface for this
volume. As a member of an older generation of plant physiologists, my
lineage in plant respiration traces back to F. F. BLACKMAN through the
privilege of having M. THOMAS and W. O. JAMES, two of his "students," as
my mentors. How the subject has changed in 40 years! In those dark ages
B. 14C. most of the information available was hard-won from long-term
experiments using the input-output approach. Respiratory changes in
response to treatments were measured by laborious gas analysis or by
titration of alkali from masses of Pettenkofer tubes; the Warburg
respir- ometer was just beginning to be used for plant studies by
pioneers such as TURNER and ROBERTSON. Nevertheless the classical
experiments of BLACKMAN with apples had led to important results on the
relations between anaerobic and aerobic carbohydrate utilization and on
the climacteric, and to the first explicit concept of respiratory
control of respiration imposed by the" organiza- tion resistance" of
cell structure. THOMAS extended this approach in his investi- gations of
the Pasteur effect and the induction of aerobic fermentation by poi-
sons such as cyanide and high concentrations of CO, JAMES began a long 2
series of studies of the partial reactions of respiration in extracts
from barley and YEMM'S detailed analysis of carbohydrate components in
relation to respira- tory changes added an important new dimension.