The fundamental cause of down-regulation of photosynthesis at elevated carbon dioxide concentration (EC) is thought to be a slower rate of utilization of saccharides than their stimulated rate of production, but there are few studies directly supporting this idea under field conditions. We hypothesized that within Brassica oleracea, down-regulation would not occur in kohlrabi because it has a large sink for saccharides in an enlarged stem, but would occur in collards, which lack this sink. Field tests were consistent with this hypothesis. In collards, the degree of down-regulation of photosynthesis in plants grown at EC varied depending on the daily integral of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) of the day prior to the measurement of photosynthetic capacity, as did leaf saccharide content. However, EC did not result in lower leaf contents of chlorophyll, soluble protein, ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase, or nitrate in collards, nor was there any evidence of a triose phosphate utilization rate limiting photosynthesis. Experiments in controlled environment chambers confirmed that there was a threshold response for the down-regulation of photosynthesis in collards at EC to the PAR of the previous day, with down-regulation only occurring above a minimum daily integral of PAR. Down-regulation of photosynthesis could be induced in plants grown at ambient carbon dioxide by a single night at low temperature or by a single day with high PAR and EC. In the controlled environment study, the degree of down-regulation of photosynthesis was highly correlated with leaf glucose, fructose, and sucrose contents, and less well correlated with starch content. Hence down-regulation of photosynthesis at EC in collards in the field represented feedback inhibition from the accumulation of soluble saccharides and day-to-day variation in its occurrence was predictable from the weather. and J. A. Bunce, R. C. Sicher.
Midday measurements of single leaf gas exchange rates of upper canopy leaves of soybeans grown in the field at 350 (AC) and 700 (EC) µmol(CO2) mol-1 in open topped chambers sometimes indicated up to 50 % higher net photosynthetic rates (PN) measured at EC in plants grown at AC compared to EC. On other days mean PN were nearly identical in the two growth [CO2] treatments. There was no seasonal pattern to the variable photosynthetic responses of soybean to growth [CO2]. Even on days with significantly lower PN in the plants grown at EC, there was no reduction in ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase, chlorophyll, or soluble protein contents per unit of leaf area. Over three years, gas exchange evidence of acclimation occurred on days when either soil was dry or the water vapor pressure deficit was high (n = 12 d) and did not occur on days after rain or on days with low water vapor pressure deficit (n = 9 d). On days when photosynthetic acclimation was evident, midday leaf water potentials were consistently 0.2 to 0.3 MPa lower for the plants grown at EC than at AC. This suggested that greater susceptibility to water stress in plants grown at EC cause the apparent photosynthetic acclimation. In other experiments, plants were grown in well-watered pots in field chambers and removed to the laboratory early in the morning for gas exchange measurements. In these experiments, the amount of photosynthetic acclimation evident in the gas exchange measurements increased with the maximum water vapor pressure deficit on the day prior to the measurements, indicating a lag in the recovery of photosynthesis from water stress. The apparent increase in susceptibility to water stress in soybean plants grown at EC is opposite to that observed in some other species, where photosynthetic acclimation was evident under wet but not dry conditions, and may be related to the observation that hydraulic conductance is reduced in soybeans when grown at EC. The day-to-day variation in photosynthetic acclimation observed here may account for some of the conflicting results in the literature concerning the existence of acclimation to EC in field-grown plants. and J. A. Bunce, R. C. Sicher.