The influence of microbial contamination of fresh and washed beetroot disks on their capacity to absorb phosphate.

When plant storage tissue is cut into thin disks it rapidly develops a high capacity to absorb phosphate from dilute solutions. The recent trend has been to attribute the development of this ability to the increased metabolic activity of bacteria known to be containing the tissue. Data presented in this paper shows that bacterial contamination of the tissue does contribute to the apparent uptake of phosphate by the disks. However, during the ageing process the number of bacteria decrease and therefore contribute less to the total uptake in the aged tissue. If the tissue is prepared and maintained in a sterile condition it is still able to develop a high capacity for phosphate absorption during ageing.