Analysing partitioning in plants
Abstract. Our understanding of the control of partitioning in plants and crops is confounded by unsatisfactory and incomplete description of the phenomenon. This paper attempts to improve upon this state of affairs by taking a fresh look at the concepts and the terms we use. 
 
While the continued usefulness in general discussion of the popular concepts of source, path and sink and of limitation is recognized, for analysing carbon flows we propose a separate, more practicable and higher level form of description based on a pool: process concept. This is similar to those used to describe the flows of other things in nature. In our analysis of competition between pools, the constant properties pool permeance and pool potential determine partitioning which is a function of the single variable plant potential. A simple phenomenological model embodying them is developed. Because our scheme is less demanding of experimental technique than some, its wide application seems feasible, extending even to the analysis of conventional crop growth measurements. The paper concludes by indicating briefly the sorts of physiological factors which could give rise to these phenomenological properties.