Tom and Carissa,
The stuff you two have been saying has got me thinking.
Carissa, when you said
I remembered some things I read a while ago, but I can no longer find to post the link, haha. It referred to how plants actually produce more rubisco in lower CO2 environments in order to become more efficient at growing, and less when CO2 is more abundant. The question that leads me to is this.
Say a non-CO2 tank sits at about 3ppm (equilibrium with air) of CO2 if there is reasonable circulation within the tank providing gas exchange with the air. Now Tom and others have said that plants grow about 10x as fast when you inject CO2 versus not using CO2. The recommended ppm for injected CO2 (at this time) is to keep it around 30ppm. 30ppm is exactly 10x more CO2 versus a non-CO2 tank, so it doesn't seem like that rubisco adjustment is really gaining the plants anything at all.
You would think that if the plants are actually producing more rubisco when CO2 is at lower levels that the plants would have maybe only a 6x increase in growth with a 10x increase in CO2, not be the same. The rubisco should be evening out the CO2 excess or lack and provide a more consistent growth level in any CO2 condition (as long as it is stable.)
That doesn't seem like it is happening though. Right now it just seems like the growth increase is linear, aka the more CO2 you inject, the faster the plants grow, and that's it. 10x CO2 = 10x growth, 5x CO2 = 5x growth, etc. Am I missing something here that is throwing me off?
Have a good one, Jeremy
The stuff you two have been saying has got me thinking.
Carissa, when you said
I didn't think about this in my above post, the fact that plants need an enzyme to use co2 and they manufacture more or less of this in response to varying levels of co2.
I remembered some things I read a while ago, but I can no longer find to post the link, haha. It referred to how plants actually produce more rubisco in lower CO2 environments in order to become more efficient at growing, and less when CO2 is more abundant. The question that leads me to is this.
Say a non-CO2 tank sits at about 3ppm (equilibrium with air) of CO2 if there is reasonable circulation within the tank providing gas exchange with the air. Now Tom and others have said that plants grow about 10x as fast when you inject CO2 versus not using CO2. The recommended ppm for injected CO2 (at this time) is to keep it around 30ppm. 30ppm is exactly 10x more CO2 versus a non-CO2 tank, so it doesn't seem like that rubisco adjustment is really gaining the plants anything at all.
You would think that if the plants are actually producing more rubisco when CO2 is at lower levels that the plants would have maybe only a 6x increase in growth with a 10x increase in CO2, not be the same. The rubisco should be evening out the CO2 excess or lack and provide a more consistent growth level in any CO2 condition (as long as it is stable.)
That doesn't seem like it is happening though. Right now it just seems like the growth increase is linear, aka the more CO2 you inject, the faster the plants grow, and that's it. 10x CO2 = 10x growth, 5x CO2 = 5x growth, etc. Am I missing something here that is throwing me off?
Have a good one, Jeremy