If you cut a lettuce you are being awfully cruel. Plants are sensitive organisms. These words were part of a talk at a British conference by Prof. Malcolm Wilkins of Glasgow University. They were a response, in part, to students who have told him that they are vegetarians because they don't like animals being killed for food. However, Wilkins told the conference that plants are much more sophisticated than ordinary people think and he implied that vegetarians are being cruel to plants when they devour a bowl of salad or slice a juicy tomato.
Browning involves the enzyme polyphenol oxidase and can be suppressed by using sulphites.
A hi-tech solution to the problem is reported in a recent issue of BioTechnology by a Dutch research team from the biotech firm, Keygene. Researchers think that this strategy can be used to prevent enzymatic browning in several other food crops. Surviving larvae, however, quickly learn to sever veins near the leaf base, thus disarming the defenses of the plant. A Race against Extinction Scientists are in a race against time and loggers who are wiping out possible sources of medicinal compounds as they cut down the forests of Borneo. As an example this article cites the story of Calophyllum lanigerum , a tree whose leaves were collected by a US field team in 1987.