Trade-offs between net assimilation rate and specific leaf area in determining relative growth rate: relationship with daily irradiance

1. Three separate experiments were conducted, involving 27 herbaceous species and 14 woody species aged 15-30 days, in order to determine the relative importance of net assimilation rate (NAR), specific leaf area (SLA) and leaf weight ratio (LWR) in explaining interspecific variations in relative growth rate. 2. Daily quantum inputs were 31.12 mol m(-2) day(-1) in the first experiment and 33.17 mol m(-2) day(-1) in the second and third experiments. This is about twice the typical irradiance of most other experiments in this area, but only about 85% of the daily photon flux in nature. Plants were cultivated in hydroponic sand culture in a solution containing 5.8 mm nitrogen. 3. RGR was strongly and positively correlated with NAR in all three experiments. RGR was weakly and negatively correlated with SLA, while the correlation between RGR and LWR was weak and variable. 4. These results are compared to those already published in the literature: the commonly reported result that interspecific variation in RGR is determined primarily by SLA is partly due to the low irradiance used in most experiments, and the relative importance of SLA and NAR changes depending on irradiance. 5. A hypothesis is proposed in which direct and indirect effects of SLA on each of NAR and RGR are decomposed, and which leads to a trade-off between SLA and NAR as a function of daily irradiance.