A Program for Transmission of Data Between the LI-6000 Photosynthesis System and MS-DOS Computers

TLDR

An integral infrared gas analyzer system (IRGA) is incorporated in the LI-6000 series of commercially available portable instruments and automatically stores measurements of CO2 concentration, chamber relative humidity, chamber temperature, leaf temperature, photosynthetically active radiation, time, and optional operator-supplied comments.

Abstract

Estimates of photosynthetic rates are obtained routinely in many plants using a number of techniques (1-3). Until recently, however, accurate field estimates of net CO2 exchange have been difficult to obtain, partially because of the limited mobility of the apparatus and the time involved in data collection (4-6). LI-COR, Inc. (Lincoln, Neb.) has developed an integral infrared gas analyzer system (IRGA), which is incorporated in their LI-6000 series of commercially available portable instruments (7). This system consists of a battery powered nondispersive IRGA, a porometer, an RS-232C serial communications interface, and a dedicated datalogger with battery-powered nonvolatile memory. This unit automatically stores measurements of CO2 concentration, chamber relative humidity, chamber temperature, leaf temperature, photosynthetically active radiation, time, and optional operator-supplied comments. Time required for a single measurement is between 30 to 180 sec, with various types of leaf chambers spanning a range of volumes between 250 and 3900 ml (7).