Increased thermal deactivation of excited pigments in pea leaves subjected to photoinhibitory treatments.

The photoacoustic technique was used to monitor thermal deexcitation of the photosynthetic pigments in intact pea leaves (Pisum sativum L.) submitted to photoinhibitory treatments. When the leaves were exposed to photon flux densities above 1000 micromoles per square meter per second, the amplitude of the photothermal component of the in vivo photoacoustic signal strongly increased. This high-light-induced stimulation of nonradiative energy dissipation (heat emission) was accompanied by an inverse change in the O(2) evolution activity and in the steady state emission of 685 nanometer chlorophyll fluorescence. The time course of these effects was shown to be very rapid, with a t(1/2) of around 15 minutes. When high-light-treated leaves were readapted to the dark, the heat emission changes were reversed, following somewhat slower kinetics. A reversible increase in the rate of light energy dissipation via radiationless transitions could be a photoprotective mechanism eliminating excess excitation energy from the photosynthetic reaction centers. Interestingly, this process does not operate at temperatures below about 12 degrees C.