Does High CO2 Level Harm Plants? – Voice of Biotecnika
Episode 31
“CO2 is the exhaling breath of our civilization, literally… Changing that pattern requires a scope, a scale, a speed of change that is beyond what we have done in the past.”
Welcome to another interesting episode of Voice of Biotecnika. In this podcast, we will discuss the fate of plants with increasing CO2 levels. What will happen to plants with increasing CO2 levels? Does High CO2 Lever Harm Plants?
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen abruptly ever since the Industrial Age came forth—and that is warming the Earth at an alarming rate. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have been progressively escalating, from nearly 315 ppm (parts per million) in 1959 to a current atmospheric average of roughly 385 ppm. Up-to-date predictions are for concentrations to continue to escalate to as much as 500–1000 ppm by the year 2100 (IPCC 2007).
While higher concentrations of CO2 are tending to have an effect on global climate, intensifying CO2 concentrations are also likely to have acute effects on the physiology, chemistry, and growth of plants, independent of any impacts on climate. These effects develop from the fundamental importance of CO2 to plant metabolism
. As photosynthetic organisms, plants take up atmospheric CO2, thus chemically reducing the carbon. This represents not only an acquirement of stored chemical energy for the plant but also presents the carbon skeletons for the organic molecules that build up a plants’ structure. Photosynthesis is, therefore, chief of the nutritional metabolism of plants, and boosting the availability of CO2 for photosynthesis can have intense effects on plant growth and many features of plant physiology. Listen to the podcast below to learn more.Listen to the podcast on SoundCloud
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