Photosynthesis under Heat Stress

Plant growth and development is dependent on a plant’s ability to convert light energy into usable chemical energy during a process termed photosynthesis. However, temperatures above that optimum for growth (heat stress) may injure and/or irreversibly damage photosynthetic machinery, pigments, and metabolites including photosynthetic enzymes, as well as the stomata (Xu et al. 1995; Sairam et al. 2000; Farooq et al. 2011). Heat stress disrupts the integrity of thylakoid membranes, thus inhibiting the activities of membrane-associated electron carriers and enzymes (Rexroth et al. 2011), which reduces the rate of photosynthesis.