Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
These include the amount of light available, the amount of leaf area a plant has to capture light (shading by other plants is a major limitation of photosynthesis), the rate at which carbon dioxide can be supplied to the chloroplasts to support photosynthesis, the availability of water, and the availability of suitable temperatures for carrying ...
This ability to avoid photorespiration makes these plants more hardy than other plants in dry and hot environments, wherein stomata are closed and internal carbon dioxide levels are low. Under these conditions, photorespiration does occur in C 4 plants, but at a much lower level compared with C 3 plants in the same conditions.
The pineapple is an example of a CAM plant.. Crassulacean acid metabolism, also known as CAM photosynthesis, is a carbon fixation pathway that evolved in some plants as an adaptation to arid conditions [1] that allows a plant to photosynthesize during the day, but only exchange gases at night.
At night, plants respire, and gas exchange partly reverses: water vapor is still lost (but to a smaller extent), but oxygen is now taken up and carbon dioxide released. [36] Fig. 11. A stylised cross-section of a euphyllophyte plant leaf, showing the key plant organs involved in gas exchange. Plant gas exchange occurs mostly through the leaves.
Through photosynthesis, plants use CO 2 from the atmosphere, water from the ground, and energy from the sun to create sugars used for growth and fuel. [22] While using these sugars as fuel releases carbon back into the atmosphere (photorespiration), growth stores carbon in the physical structures of the plant (i.e. leaves, wood, or non-woody stems). [23]
During the day, CAM plants close stomata and use stored acids as carbon sources for sugar, etc. production. The C3 pathway requires 18 ATP and 12 NADPH for the synthesis of one molecule of glucose (3 ATP + 2 NADPH per CO 2 fixed) while the C4 pathway requires 30 ATP and 12 NADPH (C3 + 2 ATP per CO 2 fixed).
Toxic concentrations within plants are 10 to 50 ppm for small grains and 200 ppm in boron-tolerant crops such as sugar beets, rutabaga, cucumbers, and conifers. Toxic soil conditions are generally limited to arid regions or can be caused by underground borax deposits in contact with water or volcanic gases dissolved in percolating water.
The first experiments indicating that some plants do not use C 3 carbon fixation but instead produce malate and aspartate in the first step of carbon fixation were done in the 1950s and early 1960s by Hugo Peter Kortschak and Yuri Karpilov. [5] [6] The C 4 pathway was elucidated by Marshall Davidson Hatch and Charles Roger Slack, in Australia ...