Measuring photosynthesis efficiency in our smallest plants 

Dr Ailbhe Brazel, a Teaching Fellow on the Terraform project, and her colleagues recently published a paper in the January 2025 issue of Plant Science, presenting findings from her previous research.

Infra-red gas exchange analysis (IRGA) is a widely used technique for assessing photosynthetic efficiency by measuring the carbon dioxide assimilated and released by plants. Traditional IRGA methods require placing plant tissue in a sealed chamber, often using bulky leaf clamps. These clamps pose challenges when working with small herbaceous plants that have delicate leaves and closed rosette structures. An alternative approach involves growing small plants in soil and using whole plant chambers for gas exchange measurements. However, this method can introduce variability due to carbon dioxide emissions from microorganisms or root respiration in the soil.

In their paper, Dr Brazel and her colleagues introduce a novel method that significantly reduces this variability, improving the accuracy of IRGA measurements for small herbaceous plants using whole plant chambers. This is the first comprehensive methods paper on IRGA analysis in Arabidopsis thaliana. The team successfully applied this technique to measure carbon dioxide assimilation in 10-day-old Arabidopsis seedlings, a crucial developmental stage frequently used in transcriptomic and biochemical research. Their method expands the toolkit available for IRGA studies in A. thaliana, enabling more precise monitoring of photosynthetic rates from early plant growth stages.

by Ailbhe Brazel