Safety conscious or living dangerously: what is the ‘right’ level of plant photoprotection for fitness and productivity?

Murchie, Erik H. (2017) Safety conscious or living dangerously: what is the ‘right’ level of plant photoprotection for fitness and productivity? Plant, Cell and Environment, 40 (8). pp. 1239-1242. ISSN 1365-3040

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Due to their sessile nature, plants could be perceived to be relatively slow and rather un-reactive. However, a plant scientist will tell you that the inability to run away (tropism notwithstanding) actually demands a highly sophisticated physiological response to the environment. Light presents an extreme case: cloud cover and wind-induced motion can lead to irradiance changes of several orders of magnitude over timescales of seconds and minutes. Being autotrophic organisms and having evolved to harvest light, plants need to dynamically regulate their biochemistry so that it operates efficiently during these fluxes, maintaining plant fitness but minimising the risk of damage.

Photosynthesis is driven at a rate that depends on the amount of available light, as shown by the schematic photosynthesis-light response curves of C3 species (Fig. 1). In nature, CO2 assimilation can go from being light-limited to being light-saturated within a very short period of time. To maximise CO2 uptake, photosynthesis should ‘track’ light levels accurately inducing and removing photoprotective processes accurately. Being able to measure photoprotection precisely in naturally fluctuating settings is difficult; however, a paper in this volume of Plant, Cell and Environment proposes a significant advance (Tietz et al. 2017).

Item Type: Article
RIS ID: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/872554
Schools/Departments: University of Nottingham, UK > Faculty of Science > School of Biosciences > Division of Plant and Crop Sciences
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1111/pce.12965
Depositing User: Eprints, Support
Date Deposited: 07 Apr 2017 14:36
Last Modified: 04 May 2020 18:55
URI: https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/41841

Actions (Archive Staff Only)

Edit View Edit View