A Physiological Approach to the Analysis of Crop Growth Data: 3. The Effects of Repeated Short Term Soil Water Deficits on the Growth of Spaced Plants of the Legume, Macroptilium atropurpureum cv. Siratro

A physiological analysis of crop growth, reported in the previouspapers in this series, is extended to deal with the growth ofspaced plants, and applied to the growth data for M. atropurpureumsubject to several successive cycles of water deficit. Differences in growth between stressed and unstressed plantscan be quantitatively attributed to a reduction in the photosyntheticactivity of the leaves of stressed plants induced by increasingtheir leaf water deficits, and to an increase in the rate ofleaf abscission by the stressed plants. Macroptilium atropurpureum, growth analysis, water stress, photosynthesis, leaf abscission, stomatal conductance