Advances on photosystem II investigation by measurement of delayed chlorophyll fluorescence by a phosphoroscopic method

A method for data acquisition based on recording of light signal from a conventional phophoroscope fluorometer with high-speed digitalization is proposed to extract more information from a delayed chlorophyll a fluorescence (DF) signal. During the signal processing from all points registered by the fluorometer, we obtain simultaneously a large number of induction curves of DF decaying at different time ranges. In addition, it is possible to register a series of dark relaxation kinetics of DF, recorded at different moments during the induction period or at different temperatures. This allows the evaluation of the contribution of DF kinetic components during the induction period or at different temperatures and the comparison between DF signals registered with different phophoroscopes. With the phosphoroscope system used in this study, we have shown that the contribution of the millisecond components (with lifetimes 0.6 and 2-4 ms) predominates during the first second of the induction period. After I s of illumination, the amplitudes of the 0.6 ms and 2-4 ms components and of the slower one (with lifetime more than 10 ms) become approximately equal. The change in lifetime of the different components during the induction and during gradual heating is also observed. It is shown that all registered DF kinetic components have different temperature dependences.