The cost to plants of different strategies of adaptation to stress and the alleviation of stress by increasing assimilation

Summary The fitter of two species that use different strategies to overcome the same stress may be the one that expends the least resources to cope with this stress. However, this concept has proven difficult to quantify. It is proposed here that the increase in maintenance respiration in response to stress factors such as high temperature, salinity or a high-oxygen atmosphere (one indirect effect of which is nitrogen deficiency) may provide a measure of the cost of adaptation, in terms of expenditure of assimilated carbon. A corrolary to this is that, where it can be shown that an adaptive strategy results in the expenditure of assimilates, adaptation may be enhanced by increasing carbon assimilation. Results are presented supporting the hypothesis and its corrolary.