No biochemical evidence for separating respiration into growth and maintenance

Abstract

It has been considered that respiratory substrates are used only for maintenance respiration under maintenance status such as when plants are placed under prolonged dark treatment (4 days). However, when ¹⁴C-[U]-sucrose or ¹⁴C-[U]-amino acid mixture was introduced into a mature leaf of rice and soybean under maintenance status, the introduced ¹⁴C-compounds were vigorously incorporated into plant tissues and subsequently into plant constituents, which indicated that the growth process did not cease under maintenance status.

Thus, we concluded that even if growth and maintenance respiration exist in plants, both types of respiration could not be separated, because growth and maintenance metabolism are closely interrelated.