Too much sunlight is not good for plants. A team of scientists are proposing
a way to measure how plants prevent burning out from too much exposure to
the sun.

The team from Michigan State University (MSU) led by Steffie Tietz from the
lab of plant scientist David Kramer at the MSU-DOE Plant Research
Laboratory, has developed a new method that measures non-photochemical
quenching, or NPQ. This is a strategy that plants use to adjust to changes
in their surroundings.

Measuring NPQ has been a problem for scientists as they can take hours to
complete, and they can only measure one leaf at a time. Research shows that
the speed at which plants adjust to changes in their surroundings is
important to their health. The team is now working to find genes that
control the speed of NPQ so they can create plants with faster response
times.

[msutoday.msu.edu]
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