Measuring CO2 assimilation of Arabidopsis thaliana whole plants and seedlings

Photosynthesis is an essential process in plants that synthesizes sugars used for growth and development, highlighting the importance of establishing robust methods to monitor photosynthetic activity. Infrared gas analysis (IRGA) can be used to track photosynthetic rates by measuring the CO2 assimilation/release from a plant. Although much progress has been made in the development of IRGA technologies, challenges remain when using this technique on small herbaceous plants such as Arabidopsis thaliana. The use of whole plant chambers can overcome the difficulties associated with applying bulky leaf clamps to small delicate leaves, however this introduces the risk of soil-based microorganisms skewing gas exchange measurements. Here, we present a simple method to efficiently perform IRGA on A. thaliana plants using a whole plant chamber that removes soil-borne effects from the measurements. We show that this method can be used to detect subtle changes in photosynthetic rates measured at different times of day, under different growth conditions, and between wild-type and plants with deficiencies in the photosynthetic machinery. Furthermore, we show that this method can be used to detect changes in photosynthetic rates even at very young developmental stages such as 10 d-old seedlings. This method contributes to the array of techniques currently used to perform IRGA on A. thaliana and can allow for the monitoring of photosynthetic rates of whole plants from young ages.