A new simple canopy photosynthesis measurement system

Abstract

Over the year's new techniques have been developed to measure the photosynthetic rate of plants in order to predict yields in crops or to establish strategies for the production and use of energy inputs such as supplemental light and carbon dioxide mainly. In recent years' techniques, have been developed that measure photosynthetic activity in plants at the level of a single leaf or even the entire plant, the latter being the technique that best fits the actual behavior of plants. The objective of this study is to propose a low-cost technique to measure photosynthesis in complete plants. This is done through the coupling of two techniques already developed: one is the measurement of the canopy CO2 exchange rates (CCER) and the other is the measurement of leaf surface using digital photographs. As a result, a CO2 monitoring chamber with polycarbonate panels was obtained in which the CO2 uptake of a tomato plant was measured, also it was possible to measure the leaf surface. Finally, using this system with tomato plants, we observed that at a temperature of 18 °C inside the chamber, the photosynthetic rate is higher than at 28 °C and 38 °C.