During mild water stress (decrease of full water capacity from 60 to 35 %) net photosynthetic rate (PN) of four spring barley and wheat genotypes was about twice lower than that for unstressed plants and was mainly limited by non-stomatal factors. Availability of CO2 from intercellular spaces did not change significantly when stomatal conductance (gs) decreased from 0.25-0.35 to 0.15-0.20 mol(H2O) m-2 s-1. There may be two main processes leading to similar intercellular CO2 concentration (ci) in stressed and unstressed seedlings despite of twice lower PN under mild water stress: (a) lower diffusion of CO2 through stomata represented by lower gs, (b) lower consumption of CO2 by photosynthetic apparatus of stressed plants. Last factor is partially pronounced by lower response of PN to ci observed for stressed than for control plants.