Question

How do plants avoid photorespiration?

Answer 1

Photorespiration:

1. Photorespiration refers to the process in which the RuBisCO enzyme oxygenates RuBP with the release of CO_2.
2. It is also named as C2 cycle.
3. In CAM plants, they open their stomata at night and incorporate CO₂ into organic acids, thus preventing photorespiration.
4. C4 plants also avoid photorespiration by using the Hatch-Slack pathway prior to the Calvin cycle.
5. The enzyme PEP carboxylase is used in place of RuBisCO to fix CO₂.
6. The C4 and CAM plants prevent photorespiration in this way.