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Comment Re: How about fruit (Score 1) 113

I'm trying to figure out what you're talking about. Are you maybe talking about PEPC binding of bicarbonate and dissolved CO2? That's a replenishing / balancing pathway for the citric acid cycle to make up for the plant robbing from it when it sequesters nitrogen (and to restore pH). It contributes at best 1-2% of the plant's carbon, and that's only if nitrogen uptake is very heavy. And bicarbonate and CO2 (they form an equilibrium) are not "soil carbon"; they're not part of the soil, they're just gas dissolved in soil moisture; the same applies equally whether the plant were grown in rich fertile humus or totally inert sterile perlite. Humus is inert and decay-resistant (that's why it persists).

A couple other guesses as to what you mean. Scavenging of free amino acids from decaying matter? Plants do that to capture nitrogen. Any carbon captured inadvertently in the process is completely irrelevant in scale. They can also pick up very tiny amounts of sugars - not physiologically relevant.

Or are you saying that soil matter rots, CO2 returns to the air, and then plants "breathe" it in? I mean, it's... technically true? But it's still atmospheric CO2 at that point, in an atmosphere shared with all life.

If not, I'm baffled. Maybe you're confusing "corn is a heavy feeder" with thinking that means carbon? (that's about fertilizer). Or perhaps you're confusing how effective corn is at capturing carbon and depositing it in soil with thinking that that's coming from the soil? I'm just guessing here.

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