Commercial Uses of Plant Hormones

Plant hormones have many practical applications in agriculture and horticulture. Understanding how auxins, gibberellins and ethene are used commercially is an important part of the Edexcel GCSE Biology (1BI0) specification. This lesson covers the main commercial applications and the science behind them.

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Overview of Plant Hormones Used Commercially

Hormone	Natural role	Commercial uses
Auxins	Cell elongation, tropisms	Rooting powder, selective weedkillers
Gibberellins	Seed germination, stem elongation	Seed germination, fruit production, promoting flowering
Ethene	Fruit ripening	Controlling ripening during transport and storage

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Auxins: Commercial Uses

1. Rooting Powder

When gardeners want to grow new plants from cuttings (pieces of stem cut from a parent plant), they use rooting powder (or rooting gel/liquid), which contains synthetic auxins.