Are bananas C3, C4, or CAM plants?
Are bananas C3, C4, or CAM plants?
Are bananas C3, C4, or CAM plants? I have been researching for some time and cannot find the answer.
2 Answers
2
First of all we have to think about ecosystem in which banana exist. Obviously the banana is in a rain forest. Rain forests are very interesting ecosystem with lots of species. The climate is really hot and atmosphere has high humidity.
Banana is definitely not CAM plant, because this kind of photosynthesis has usually cactuses and succulents. CAM plants usually have closed stromas during the day and open at night to protect from possible lost of water, carbon dioxide. This type of photosythesis doesn't suite in to the rain forest.
C4 plants is well know for Kranz anatomy of leaf. They have special sheets to do secondary fixation of carbon dioxide. So according to this web I personally believe that banana is not C4 plant.
So according to this article the banana has C3 photosynthesis.
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The PDF you linked to is broken. You may want to link to the original article page instead of the PDF itself.
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– forest
Sep 9 '18 at 2:00
You can find a list of families known to have C4 plants here. [based on Sage 2016]1.
Although many other monocot species do exhibit C4 photosynthesis (and C4 photosynthsis does seem to have evolved independently multiple times)2, the banana family, Musaceae, consists of C3 plants3.
This includes the most commonly consumed variety of banana in developed countries, the Cavendish banana.
Sources:
Sage, R. F. (2016). Journal of Experimental Botany 67(14):4039–4056
Ehleringer et al (1997). Oecologia 112:285299.
Biocylopedia
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Anyway according to wiki there is a lots of cultivars and specious of bananas so i really dont know if its true for all of them.
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– L.Diago
Sep 8 '18 at 22:31