Title: The Effect of Oxygen Concentration on Photosynthesis in Higher Plants - Björkman - 1966 - Physiologia Plantarum - Wiley Online Library
Headings: The Effect of Oxygen Concentration on Photosynthesis in Higher Plants
Physiologia Plantarum
The Effect of Oxygen Concentration on Photosynthesis in Higher Plants
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1399-3054.1966.tb07046.x
Abstract
Citing Literature

Content: Oxygen might act as an electron acceptor at this site, causing reducing power to react back with molecular oxygen. However, this hypothesis does not account for equal inhibitions of the quantum yield and the light saturated rate of photosynthetic CO 2 uptake. Through the photosynthetic process plants take up carbon dioxide and evolve oxygen. The present high concentration of molecular oxygen in the atmosphere is generally considered to have arisen from the activity of photo‐synthetic organisms. The effect of oxygen concentration would seem, therefore, to he a problem of great interest, not only in the field of the biophysics and biochemistry of photosynthesis, but in ecology and other branches of biology as well. It was discovered by Warburg (1920) that high concentrations of oxygen inhibit the rate of photosynthetic oxygen evolution in the unicellular alga Chlorella. Since then, it has been confirmed by various authors that oxygen cconcentrations in the range 21–100 per cent have a marked inhibitory effect on photosynthesis, particularly at saturating light intensities. There is some evidence that under conditions when carbon dioxide concentration limits photosynthesis, the inhibition may become obvious even in 21 per cent oxygen. The inhibition has not been considered to operate at low light intensities. A review on the subject has been given by Turner and Brittain (1962).