Abstract
Plants in their natural environment are often exposed to fluctuating light because of self-shading and cloud movements. As changing frequency is a key characteristic of fluctuating light, we speculated that rapid light fluctuation may induce rapid photosynthetic responses, which may protect leaves against photoinhibition. To test this hypothesis, maize seedlings were grown under fluctuating light with various frequencies (1, 10, and 100 cycles of fluctuations/10 h), and changes in growth, chlorophyll content, gas exchange, chlorophyll a fluorescence, and P700 were analyzed carefully. Our data show that though the growth and light-saturated photosynthetic rate were depressed by rapidly fluctuating light, photosynthesis induction was clearly speeded up. Furthermore, more rapid fluctuation of light strikingly reduced the chlorophyll content, while thermal dissipation was triggered and enhanced. The chlorophyll a fluorescence induction kinetics and P700 absorption results showed that the activities of both photosystem II and photosystem I decreased as the frequency of the fluctuating light increased. In all treatments, the light intensities of the fluctuating light were kept constant. Therefore, rapid light fluctuation frequency itself induced the acceleration of photosynthetic induction and the enhancement of photoprotection in maize seedlings, which play important roles in protecting photosynthetic apparatus against fluctuating high light to a certain extent.
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Abbreviations
- DW:
-
Dry weight
- FW:
-
Fresh weight
- P n :
-
Net photosynthetic rate
- G s :
-
Stomatal conductance
- PPFD:
-
Photosynthetic photon flux density
- PS II:
-
Photosystem II
- PS I:
-
Photosystem I
- F o :
-
Minimum fluorescence intensity in the dark-adapted state
- F m :
-
Maximum fluorescence intensity in the dark-adapted state
- F v/F m :
-
Maximum quantum yield of photosystem II
- ψ o :
-
Efficiency at which a trapped exciton can move an electron further than QA− in the electron transport chain
- φ Eo :
-
Probability that an absorbed photon will move an electron into the electron transport chain
- F s :
-
Steady-state fluorescence intensity in the light-adapted state
- F m′:
-
Maximum fluorescence intensity in the light-adapted state
- F o′:
-
Minimum fluorescence intensity in the light-adapted state
- F v′/F m′:
-
Efficiency of excitation captured by open PSII centers in the light-adapted state
- q p :
-
Photochemical quenching coefficient of PSII in the light-adapted state
- Ф PSII :
-
Actual efficiency of PSII in the light-adapted state
- NPQ:
-
Non-photochemical quenching
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This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31571576).
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Qiao, MY., Zhang, YJ., Liu, LA. et al. Do rapid photosynthetic responses protect maize leaves against photoinhibition under fluctuating light?. Photosynth Res 149, 57–68 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11120-020-00780-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11120-020-00780-5