Standard units for ElectroChromic Shift measurements in plant biology

Abstract The absorbance shift of pigments is proportional to the membrane potential (Δψ) in plants, green algae, and many photosynthetic bacteria. It is currently denoted as ElectroChromic Shift (ECS) at 515–520 nm for plant carotenoids. It is increasingly being used for phenotyping plants for traits related to photosynthesis or chloroplast metabolism because it is a non-invasive technique and also because more instruments are now commercially available from various manufacturers. The ECS technique is currently used to monitor the post-illumination decay of the proton-motive force (pmf), but it has a more general use for quantitative studies on photosynthetic energy transduction. Here we briefly summarize the basic knowledge on ECS, emphasize the full potential of this technique, and propose a quantitative analysis of the photosynthetic performance with the definition of a transmission coefficient for electrons along the photosynthetic chain. ElectroChromic Shift can be used to measure the light–response curves of electron transport rate, the fraction of open photosystems, and transmission coefficient for the photosynthetic chain.