CAM plants and the C4 pathway
This is described in detail in your textbook. What you need to know is that plants living in hot,
dry environments have worked out a way to minimize water loss during the day; but that this
process also prevents carbon dioxide from entering the plant. Instead, they allow carbon dioxide
to enter at night and fix it into a 4 carbon compound using the C4 pathway (crabgrass, sugarcane
and corn for example); or in desert plants in the form of crassulacean acid (CAM plants which is
short for Crassulacean Acid Metabolism). During the day, both types of plants use the carbon
processed the night before for photosynthesis.
So, that in a nutshell and with as little chemistry involved as possible, is how plants make food.
This figure is a good summary of the overall process of
photosynthesis .
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