Integrity of plants in individual development, for example tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.)

Self-identity means that in different circumstances, at different stages of development, we are dealing with the same object, phenomenon or process. In experimental biology, the description of self-identity and the possibility of its quantitative accounting are of fundamental importance. In particular, self-identity reflects the integrity of the individual development of plant organisms. The aim of the work is to identify the factor that combines and sequencing the processes of morphogenesis in the course of individual plant development, using the example of tobacco. The work is a specially planned field experiment carried out to test the hypothesis that the general factor that unites and regulates the whole variety of processes occurring in the course of individual development of tobacco is its temporary organization. The material for the study was served by two lines of tobacco of obviously different origin - the offspring of individual plants obtained by self-pollination. During the entire vegetation period, the parameters of growth of the allocated morphological characters for the periods of passage by the plants of three different phenotypes of the vegetative and generative periods of tobacco development were subject to the calculation. As a result of the analysis of the obtained field experimental data with the use of confirmatory factor analysis in a model with latent variables, two consequences of the hypothesis put forward have been confirmed: 1) in one variety the development of different parts of plants within the limits of the specified intervals is proportional to each other; 2) in different varieties the development of different plant parts relative to the specified pheno-intervals is variety-specific. Morphological characters and other indicators of different structural levels are characteristics of the spatial organization of plants. The dynamics of these characteristics in the scale of their own biological time determines the spatial-temporal organization of living systems (chronotope). The identification of the chronotope as a general factor uniting and ordering the whole variety of processes that occur during the individual development of tobacco means that the spatial-temporal organization is an objective indicator of integrity and determines the self-identity of natural organism systems.