A lab for all seasons: The laboratory revolution in modern botany and the rise of physiological plant ecologyBy Sharon E.Kingsland, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2023. pp. 400. $40 (Paperback). ISBN: 978‐0‐300‐26721‐1

The summer of 2023 was the hottest season in the recorded history of the Northern Hemisphere. Wildfires that blazed across the United States, Canada, and Greece consumed millions of acres of forest land while also exposing people across the world to dangerous levels of smoke emissions. At the same time, the city of Derna, Libya was ravaged by devastating floodwaters, and in the United States, heavy rainfall caused Vermont's worst flooding in a century. The realities of climate change, splashed across headlines daily, can no longer be ignored. Sharon E. Kingsland, in her timely and extensive analysis of 20th-century physiological ecology, brings to light the institutional settings, technological developments, intellectual endeavors, and social and cultural dynamics that guided plant scientists as they grappled with their world of environmental change. As her narrative unfolds, we travel around the world from the United States to Australia, gaining a comparative perspective on the history of plant sciences across different countries throughout the 20th century. Drawing on dozens of case studies which have garnered little previous attention in historical literature, this global account demonstrates how laboratory innovations catalyzed the activities of physiological plant ecologists in their pressing, interdisciplinary efforts to use science to optimize the food supplies of a rapidly growing population in an uncertain climatic future. Kingsland divides this story into three distinct parts, each unraveling an intricate web of challenges and innovations within plant science. In Part I, we are introduced to the construction of the “phytotron,” an environmental laboratory facility that enabled scientists to study numerous plant species throughout all stages of their development under controlled conditions. These new laboratories, conceived and constructed between the late 1940s and mid-1960s, represented a major milestone in plant science. Even their name was coined to evoke the similarly influential, Big Science instrument in particle physics, the cyclotron. The very first phytotron, which opened at the California Institute of Technology in 1949, was the culmination of a decade of collaboration between the university, a generous philanthropic donor, a skilled team of engineers, and Frits Warmolt Went, a biologist who became one of the earliest advocates of this technology. Although on the outside the facility did not appear much different from the one-story homes of the Pasadena neighborhood in which it resided, the inside of Went's phytotron was a testament to the ideal of laboratory control with its hundreds of switches, knobs, flashing lights, buttons, dials, computers, and recording devices. Circulation pumps, air conditioners, and heaters helped allow for precise temperature manipulation, while electrical conduits and motor circuits were used to control incandescent lamps and newly developed fluorescent lighting tubes. The laboratory accommodated plants of all sizes, from tiny test-tube-dwelling annuals to full-grown trees. It was, truly, a laboratory for all species and all seasons. To contextualize this groundbreaking development, throughout Part I Kingsland explores earlier attempts to envision and construct facilities for experimental biology. She highlights the challenges faced by biologists before World War II and underscores the transformative potential of the new laboratories that arose in the postwar period. As Kingsland recounts for us, prior to World War II, plant ecology and plant physiology had been evolving as separate disciplines. Early plant ecologists had hoped to unify these approaches, but at that point ecology lacked the experimental rigor that was fundamental to physiology. But even a mature experimental science like plant physiology still struggled to find a firm laboratory foothold. In the spring of 1946, Went and his colleague Henry Owen Eversole trekked across the United States to assess the state of botanical laboratories from the west to the east coast. Their findings uncovered disparities in the support and quality of plant physiology research across different universities, illuminating the need for innovations like the phytotron which would set a new, higher standard for botanical research. For Went and his team, each piece of precision instrumentation in the phytotron helped to link the disciplines of ecology and physiology by providing these fields with the rigor, replicability, and experimental acceleration needed to reveal the intricate interactions between plants and their environments. With these devices, scientists undertook projects to breed hardier, more adaptive crops and also discovered much about contemporary environmental problems such as smog and erosion. During his numerous travels throughout the 1950s, Frits Went sang the praises of phytotrons. His efforts helped to generate worldwide buzz for phytotrons that extended through the 1970s, waning only in the 1980s as laboratory designs with more adaptability became desirable. How the phytotron craze unfolded across the globe serves as the focus of Part II. Throughout this section, Kingsland takes us on a journey across various countries, namely, the United States, France, Australia, Israel, the Soviet Union, and Hungary, to examine how phytotrons spread worldwide. But what triggered this decades-long movement in the first place? What goals were shared between phytotron projects in different countries? And how did each country adjust and use phytotrons to address its specific needs? Kingsland begins to answer these questions by showing how one unifying element of this movement was the Caltech phytotron itself. Many scientists who aimed to construct their own versions of phytotrons had previously visited or worked at this important facility. As these scientists translated the Caltech model to different settings, they adapted its equipment to address specific national requirements. With these new facilities, scientists could pursue both general botanical research, which was unrelated to economic concerns, and practical agricultural investigations. For the United States, Kingsland illustrates how the proliferation of phytotrons dovetailed with the emergence of Big Science in biology. Phytotrons came to be viewed as regional laboratories akin to the national laboratories which grew out of the Manhattan Project following World War II. They drew in thousands of dollars in funding from agencies like the National Science Foundation and encouraged investigators from various fields and universities to work together on a single project, like the one designed to work out the mechanisms of photoperiodism. In the French case, worldwide social networks take center stage. Because of the phytotron's capability to bring together a diverse group of scientists and technicians and to inspire international conferences, publications, and newsletters, the leader of the French phytotron movement, Pierre Chouard, even began to speak of “phytotronics” as a new, distinct discipline. The Australian case offers another example of Big Science in action as phytotrons began to multiply across the country, though scientists in Australia were quick to dismiss the idea that phytotronics was becoming its own discipline. As phytotrons spread throughout the Australian, French, and American landscapes, global agencies like UNESCO partnered with local scientists to deploy similar devices in Israel. Scientists used Israeli phytotrons to address the future of agriculture in arid environments by studying how plants adapted to the unique stresses of desert ecosystems, further underscoring the vital practical applications of these facilities. While each of the previous examples presents a compelling case for the influence of phytotron technology, it is Kingsland's analysis of phytotrons in the service of Communist regimes, specifically those of the Soviet Union and Hungary, that comprises her most engaging and insightful case studies. These two examples showcase the far-reaching appeal of phytotrons and offer fresh perspectives on the history of Lysenkoism—the movement in the Soviet Union that shunned Mendelian genetics in favor of the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Kingsland expertly shows how Russia's first phytotron, opened in a suburb of Moscow in 1957, effectively undermined the authority of Lysenkoism by providing scientists with precision instrumentation. This “research infrastructure,” as Kingland calls it, stood in direct opposition to the “vague” theories of Lysenko which “lacked scientific backing from disciplines such as physiology, biochemistry, and biophysics” (pp. 144–145). Rather than engage with Lysenko's scientifically baseless ideas in an ideological debate that they would surely lose, physiological researchers were determined to use every piece of precision equipment in the Soviet phytotron to bury Lysenko's ideas with an avalanche of data wrought by exact science. Kingsland's interpretation of the defiant, concerted actions of these plant physiologists is a welcome revision to previous literature, which has tended to characterize these actors as passive in their opposition to Lysenkoism.1 Like all tools, however, phytotrons proved malleable in the hands of their users, as the case of the Hungarian phytotron reminds us. One of the central goals of this facility, which opened in 1972, was to find evidence against the “central dogma” of biology advanced by Francis Crick in 1958. This theory held that biological information only flows one way, from DNA to proteins, via RNA as an intermediary. Enter Sándor Rajki, a Hungarian agricultural biologist who received his PhD in Moscow from the Institute of Genetics. Rajki championed a “metabolism-biochemical concept of heredity,” which was an unorthodox biological argument that, although distinct from either Crick's central dogma or strict Lysenkoism, hinged on the belief in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. When Rajki returned home to Hungary following his doctoral studies, he sought to test his idea in his country's new phytotron, in large part because he believed this instrument was particularly well suited for investigating controversial theories. Although he struggled to find evidence in favor of his proposed mechanism of inheritance, the phytotron nonetheless served as a tool to “clarify and advance a line of research on metabolism and heredity that had originated in Michurinist-Lysenkoist theories” (p. 156). The two case studies of Hungary and the Soviet Union, then, offer compelling demonstrations of phytotronics being used to bolster contradictory theoretical positions, and they further speak to how the laboratory movement entailed a concerted effort to share knowledge across different scientific communities, boost patronage of such endeavors, and establish supportive social networks. Partially driven by this global laboratory movement, botanical research expanded rapidly during the postwar era and invigorated field sciences like ecology. In the three chapters that comprise Part III, Kingsland transitions to an examination of the rise of physiological plant ecology during this period. She highlights examples where laboratory-based experimental science and field studies came into close contact with each other. New technologies, Kingsland shows, influenced the synthesis of plant physiology and ecology into physiological plant ecology by blurring the boundary between the laboratory and the field. These innovations, often direct spinoffs of the phytotron laboratory, included mobile laboratories for field research, rhizotrons for studying soil environments, biotrons for plant and animal research, and ecotrons for artificial ecosystem studies. One engaging episode in Kingsland's analysis comes in Chapter 7, which centers on Frits Went's study of mycorrhizae, or root fungi. Unlike her previous chapters, which took people, places, and devices as their subjects, here Kingsland traces the convoluted path taken by a hypothesis concerning nutrient cycling, known as the “direct nutrient cycling theory.” Developed in 1968 by Nellie Beetham Stark in collaboration with Went during an expedition through the Brazilian Amazon, this hypothesis suggested that mycorrhizal fungi played a vital role in “transmitting nutrients from plant litter directly to plant roots,” a process that was exceptionally important in the nutrient-poor soils of tropical forests (p. 207). As this hypothesis gained traction, ecologists and mycologists interpreted its meaning differently, exposing a deep divide between these disciplines. Mycologists staked their claims on laboratory studies, while ecologists wanted to understand how these dynamics operated in natural soil systems. A study launched in Venezuela in the 1970s to test Stark and Went's nutrient cycling hypothesis helped to bridge this gap. International inequities, made apparent during a transnational project such as this, weighed heavily on the minds of the American and European researchers working in Latin America. While Kingsland notes that their desire “to confront the accusation of scientific imperialism” (p. 249) remains an area ripe for further investigation, she explains how these scientists found success through the technological innovations they designed to open the black box of soil systems. Because it was highly difficult to conduct observations of underground processes, new technologies like radioisotope tracers and rhizotrons, underground laboratories that enabled direct observations of root systems, had to be devised. As Stark and Went's hypothesis passed through these shared workspaces and specialized laboratories onto the stages of symposia, international meetings, and publications, the precise mechanisms of nutrient cycling began to be worked out through iterative interdisciplinary collaboration. While this episode is just one of several that Kingsland evocatively brings to life, it is emblematic of the broader theme of synthesis which cuts across every page of A Lab for All Seasons, serving to connect each part of the book to the others. Kingsland builds on previous foundational scholarship to show that the development of phytotrons and related technological innovations was about more than achieving total environmental and experimental control.2 Phytotrons facilitated scientists in their ongoing quest for synthetic interpretations. Working within a phytotron encouraged interdisciplinary exchanges, blurred the lines between field and laboratory, dissolved the artificial boundary between basic and applied sciences, and emphasized a holistic study of entire organisms in their environments, from seedling to forest canopy. Kingsland is resolute, but not alarmist, in reminding us that these synthetic goals remain as vital today as they were seven decades ago, though they are now urgently necessitated by the swift progression of climate change. This book ultimately serves as a testament to the critical importance of plant sciences in our health and well-being and will be of great interest to historians of technology and biology, scientific practitioners, and policymakers alike. Far from serving as the final word on these topics, Kingsland has begun an exciting and essential conversation.

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