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Maize (Zea mays, Poaceae) is the most widely cultivated C 4 plant.[1]In botany, C 4 carbon fixation is one of three known methods of photosynthesis used by plants. C 4 plants increase their photosynthetic efficiency by reducing or suppressing photorespiration, which mainly occurs under low atmospheric CO 2 concentration, high light, high temperature, drought, and salinity.
C 3 carbon fixation occurs in all plants as the first step of the Calvin–Benson cycle. (In C 4 and CAM plants, carbon dioxide is drawn out of malate and into this reaction rather than directly from the air.) Cross section of a C 3 plant, specifically of an Arabidopsis thaliana leaf. Vascular bundles shown.
The δ 13 C of C3 plants depends on the relationship between stomatal conductance and photosynthetic rate, which is a good proxy of water use efficiency in the leaf. [19] C3 plants with high water-use efficiency tend to be less fractionated in 13 C (i.e., δ 13 C is relatively less negative) compared to C3 plants with low water-use efficiency. [19]
The simpler C3 cycle which operates in most plants is adapted to wetter darker environments, such as many northern latitudes. [citation needed] Maize, sugar cane, and sorghum are C4 plants. These plants are economically important in part because of their relatively high photosynthetic efficiencies compared to many other crops. Pineapple is a ...
In the Aristida genus for example, one species (A. longifolia) is C3 but the approximately 300 other species are C4. As another example, the whole tribe of Andropogoneae, which includes maize, sorghum, sugar cane, "Job's tears", and bluestem grasses, is C4. [14] Around 46 percent of grass species are C4 plants. [15]
About 8,100 plant species use C 4 carbon fixation, which represents about 3% of all terrestrial species of plants. [ 27 ] [ 28 ] All these 8,100 species are angiosperms . C 4 carbon fixation is more common in monocots compared with dicots , with 40% of monocots using the C 4 pathway [ clarification needed ] , compared with only 4.5% of dicots.
These species were later termed C4 plants as the first stable compound of CO 2 fixation in light has four carbons as malate and aspartate. [ 109 ] [ 110 ] [ 111 ] Other species that lack Kranz anatomy were termed C3 type such as cotton and sunflower, as the first stable carbon compound is the three-carbon PGA.
In addition, there are two types of plants with different biochemical pathways; the C3 carbon fixation, where the isotope separation effect is more pronounced, C4 carbon fixation, where the heavier 13 C is less depleted, and Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM) plants, where the effect is similar but less pronounced than with C 4 plants.