ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses solely on basic models that well explain the rationale for chlorophyll fluorescence methods. Originally, the model effectively explained the relationship between the quantum yield of photosynthetic electron transport and parameter FV/FM, which is now commonly used to estimate the maximum quantum yield of photosystem II (PSII) photochemistry. The parameters derived from chlorophyll a fluorescence measurements based on the Pulse-Amplitude Modulated (PAM) method provide information about the fluxes of energy originating from the de-excitation of chlorophyll molecules in PSII through non-invasive assessment of almost any plant. The rationale for the saturation pulse (SP) method is that in a given state, the primary electron acceptor of PSII, QA, can be fully reduced by a SP. Numerous mathematical models have been developed to translate the values of chlorophyll fluorescence measured by the SP method into parameters characterizing the physiological status of the photosynthetic apparatus.
