Relationship between leaf nitrogen and photosynthetic rate for three NAD-ME and three NADP-ME C4 grasses.

Theoretical considerations have suggested that there may be differences in photosynthetic nitrogen use efficiency (PNUE) among plants that use different biochemical variants of C(4) photosynthesis. To test this hypothesis we examined the leaf nitrogen content and photosynthetic rates of six grass species (three of C(4) subtype NAD-ME and three of C(4) subtype NADP-ME) grown over a wide range of nitrogen supply. While there were significant differences among the species in various traits, there were no consistent differences between the C(4) subtypes in either leaf nitrogen content at a given level of nitrogen supply or in the leaf nitrogen-photosynthesis relationship. We suggest that species-level variation in photosynthetic nitrogen use efficiency among C(4) species is large enough to mask any differences that may be due to C(4) subtype.