Photosynthetic and respiratory efficiency

Abstract

The growth rate of a plant depends on many environmental and endogenous factors,but can ultimately be defined in terms of carbon by the balance between photosynthetic CO₂₀ assimilation and the respiratory costs, and also by a carbon partitioning factor, as modelled by Masle et al. (1990). Theoretically, it is possible to improve plant growth (and thus productivity and final biological or economical yield) either by increasing the amount of photosythesis, by reducing ‘unnecessary’ respiratory costs, or by allocating more carbon into appropriate sinks (optimization of ‘assimilate processing’).