Primary production chlorophyll methods

J. McGowan, T. Hayward, E. Venrick and others, CLIMAX time-series Pioneering research on rates and regulation of primary production, including nutrient limitation studies of environmental heterogeneity and phytoplankton community structure dynamics of deep chlorophyll maximum layer studies of N2 fixation DON distributions and dynamics studies of primary N02 maximum layer analytical methods development and improvement centered at, or near, the CLIMAX site (28°N, 155°W)... 

In the decades after World War I, the main interests shifted from population dynamics to physico-chemical analyses and finally to environmental properties and processes, promoted by improvements in analytical methods, including chlorophyll and primary production measurements. 

R being the relative photosynthesis, determined empirically, for the appropriate value of surface radiation, k the extinction coefficient per metre of the water, C the amount of chlorophyll in g m, and the factor 3.7 a mean value for the assimilation number. Values estimated by this method and those determined by the oxygen technique agreed reasonably well for a number of sea areas in which primary productivity varied by an order of magnitude (Fogg, 1975). 

Chromatography has been the primary preparative separation method in biology and biochemistry since 1906, when the Italo-Russian botanist Tswett separated the pigments of chlorophyll by passing petroleum ether extracts of plant material through a column packed with powdered chalk. In the 1930s, column chromatography became an important tool for the separation of natural products... 

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