In
ecology
Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their Natural environment, environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community (ecology), community, ecosystem, and biosphere lev ...
, pressure-volume curves describe the relationship between total
water potential
Water potential is the potential energy of water per unit volume relative to pure water in reference conditions. Water potential quantifies the tendency of water to move from one area to another due to osmosis, gravity, mechanical pressure and mat ...
(Ψt) and relative
water content
Water content or moisture content is the quantity of water contained in a material, such as soil (called ''soil moisture''), rock, ceramics, crops, or wood. Water content is used in a wide range of scientific and technical areas, and is expressed ...
(R) of living
organism
An organism is any life, living thing that functions as an individual. Such a definition raises more problems than it solves, not least because the concept of an individual is also difficult. Many criteria, few of them widely accepted, have be ...
s. These values are widely used in research on plant-water relations and provide valuable information on the
turgor
Turgor pressure is the force within the cell that pushes the plasma membrane against the cell wall.
It is also called ''hydrostatic pressure'', and is defined as the pressure in a fluid measured at a certain point within itself when at equilib ...
,
osmotic
Osmosis (, ) is the spontaneous net movement or diffusion of solvent molecules through a selectively-permeable membrane from a region of high water potential (region of lower solute concentration) to a region of low water potential (region o ...
and
elastic
Elastic is a word often used to describe or identify certain types of elastomer, Elastic (notion), elastic used in garments or stretch fabric, stretchable fabrics.
Elastic may also refer to:
Alternative name
* Rubber band, ring-shaped band of rub ...
properties of
plant tissue
In biology, tissue is an assembly of similar cells and their extracellular matrix from the same embryonic origin that together carry out a specific function. Tissues occupy a biological organizational level between cells and a complete organ. ...
s.
According to the Boyle–v'ant Hoff Relation, the product of
osmotic potential
Osmotic pressure is the minimum pressure which needs to be applied to a solution to prevent the inward flow of its pure solvent across a semipermeable membrane.
It is also defined as the measure of the tendency of a solution to take in its pure ...
and volume of solution should be a constant for any given amount of osmotically active
solute
In chemistry, a solution is defined by IUPAC as "A liquid or solid phase containing more than one substance, when for convenience one (or more) substance, which is called the solvent, is treated differently from the other substances, which are ...
s in an ideal osmotic system.
= A constant
is osmotic potential and
is volume of solution.
This can then be manipulated to a
linear relation
In linear algebra, a linear relation, or simply relation, between elements of a vector space or a module is a linear equation that has these elements as a solution.
More precisely, if e_1,\dots,e_n are elements of a (left) module over a ring ( ...
which describes the ideal situation:
=
A
constant
References
{{reflist
Membrane biology