PubMed · 2026-06-05
Researchers built a streamlined mathematical framework that distills how efficiently a plant leaf captures CO2 down to just two key parameters, revealing which biological bottlenecks most limit photosynthesis across different species. This tool helps scientists quickly identify whether a plant's carbon-fixing performance is held back by its pores, its internal air spaces, or its cellular chemistry.
CO2 fixation across diverse plant species can be reduced to just two key parameters that define three distinct rate-limiting regimes: stomatal uptake, intercellular diffusion, and intracellular processes.
Most species studied show dominant co-limitation by both stomatal and intracellular processes simultaneously, rather than a single clear bottleneck.
Approximately half of species require spatially resolved leaf-scale models to accurately describe their photosynthesis, while the other half can be adequately captured by simpler intracellular-only models.