Experimental researches on vegetable assimilation and respiration.—XX. The energetic efficiency of photosynthesis in green plants: Some new data and a discussion of the problems

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Abstract
The greater part of this paper is devoted to the formulation and discussion of the problems that underlie a satisfactory evaluation of photosynthetic efficiency. The original experimental work that it contains will be found in the early part of Section II. This experimental work was carried out in the Botany School, Cambridge, in 1921-22, and in the latter year a short account of it was given at the meeting of the British Association. The author’s work was done after the publication of the earlier papers of Wurmser (18) and Warburg and Negelein (13), but before the appearance of the later papers by these workers; Wurmser (19) and Warburg and Negelein (14). The relations of these various experimental investigations are fully discussed in Section II. Photosynthetic efficiency is a ratio of two quantities; energy absorbed by reactants and energy fixed in the products, neither of which can be measured directly. The indirect evaluation of each of these quantities presents its special difficulties, as a glance at the table of contents of this paper will reveal. Section I sets out the problems that have to be faced in attempting to arrive at the amount of energy absorbed by the actual reactants of the photosynthetic process. These problems are mainly of a physical nature, for the optical behaviour of assimilatory tissue is very complex, even when it is assumed that the composition and the intensity of the incident radiation are fully known.

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