Morphology and plant productivity

Plants have several organs which play fundamental roles in plant life. These include roots, stems, and leaves. The various organs are interconnected in their roles in one way or another to carry out their functions effectively; however, leaves are the most significant for the plant photosynthetic process, where the light factor has great effects. Generally, the morphological organization of the plant’s organs has been an area of numerous paradoxes, and in most cases, the structure of the various organs has been portrayed as a mosaic of contradictory regarding plant requirements and productivity. Plants require light for photosynthesis. The photosynthetic rate depends on the input and the output of the materials needed to carry out the process. This means a large leaf surface area is necessary for capturing the light energy, but a large surface area induces high water loss from the plant body. Plants adapt to this dualistic purpose through the integration of different morphological and anatomical features that keep the process at the optimal point, through the channeling of the necessary elements for photosynthesis into the plant body, and elimination of the excess ones such as water and CO2. This complex control perhaps compromises the plant life productivity