ABSORPTION SPECTRA OF LEAVES CORRECTED FOR SCATTERING and DISTRIBUTIONAL ERROR: A RADIATIVE TRANSFER and ABSORPTION STATISTICS TREATMENT

Abstract

Abstract A comprehensive treatment of light propagation through intact leaves based on the theories of radiative transfer and absorption statistics was used to calculate the theoretical absorption spectra of the chlorophyll‐containing particles under conditions of multiple scattering and pigment spatial distribution equivalent to those in a leaf. These spectra were compared with the experimental in vivo spectra of leaves and in vitro spectra of chlorophyll‐protein complexes extracted form these leaves. We conclude that the main discrepancies between the in vivo and in vitro spectra are apparently due to the optical artifacts specific for light propagation in leaves‐multiple scattering and distributional error. Alterations of the pigment properties upon extraction significantly contribute to these discrepancies. The method has an estimated accuracy of about 10% and can be applied to derive the intrinsic optical properties of the photosynthetic mechanism in a leaf, as well as for the systematic study of their changes in the course of light adaptation.