Factors necessary for photosynthesis

Factors affecting rate of photosynthesis

• main factors affecting rate of photosynthesis are
  • light intensity and wavelength, temperature and carbon dioxide concentration
• at constant temperature, rate of photosynthesis varies with light intensity, initially increasing as light intensity increases, but at higher light intensities the rate reaches a plateau
• at high light intensity the rate of photosynthesis increases as temperature is increased over a limited range, at low light intensity, increasing temperature has little effect on the rate
• From research we know that photochemical reactions are not generally affected by temperature. These two results illustrate two important things;
  • temperature affects the rate of photosynthesis so there must be two sets of reactions in full process of photosynthesis; a light dependent photochemical stage and a light independent, temperature dependent stage
  • the concept of limiting factors

Limiting Factors

• rate of a process which depends on a series of reactions is limited by the slowest reaction in the series
• the rate will be limited by…