Red Drop and Role of Auxiliary Pigments in Photosynthesis

Abstract

The presentation of this paper was intended as a memorial to Dr. Emerson; I was urged to publish it to give all those zworking in the field access to the results of Emerson's last, exciting results. A paper presented by J. Myers (12) at the same meeting provides both confirmation and inter-esting expansion of the phenomenon which is becom-ing known as the Emerson effect*. In particular, it shows that the so-called chromatic transient, as ob-served after the replacement of illumination with light at 700 mA by illumination with a shorter-wave light giving the samne steady yield of photosynthesis, has the same action spectrum as the Emerson effect, i.e., suggests a specific role of chlorophyll b.