Dihydrozeatin (DHZ)

DL-Dihydrozeatin (DHZ) is a naturally occuring cytokinin that is generally very active. DHZ derivatives are commonly found in plant tissues and are frequent metabolites of ap-plied zeatin. In a bioassay, DHZ and its con-jugates are equally active as their zeatin ana-logues. In studies where DHZ has been exter-nally supplied to plants it appears to be more ‘stable’ than zeatin. This may be because DHZ is not a substrate for cytokinin oxidase. DHZ may be important in the mainte-nance of cytokinin activity levels in an oxidative envi-ronment.