Chlorophyll and carotenoid quantification: An MS Excel-based calculator

Abstract

Quantification of photosynthetic pigments, including chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, total chlorophyll, and carotenoids, is one of the potential determinants in plant physiology and related disciplines. Spectrophotometric methods employing the Arnon's equations are widely used for this purpose following pigment extraction in 80% acetone. However, manual calculation of these parameters is often a tedious and error-prone process, particularly for researchers analyzing large numbers of samples. To address this challenge and enhance efficiency in plant physiology laboratories, we have developed a user-friendly Chlorophyll Calculator as an MS Excel spreadsheet. This technical note describes the development of the calculator and highlights its advantages for efficiently quantifying the photosynthetic pigments. This simple software tool named Chlorophyll Calculator v 1.2 was written in Microsoft® Excel 2010 for the mathematical calculations of the most fundamental photosynthetic pigments. This spreadsheet is based on the most popular methods of Arnon (1949) for chlorophyll estimation and of Davis (1976) for carotenoid determination. It can calculate up to four different types of photosynthetic pigments (chlorophyll a, b, total, and carotenoids). All estimates carried mean values and standard errors. The tool has been tested under different Microsoft® Excel for Microsoft Windows® environments. It is available free of charge for use in teaching and research. It can be obtained from the supplementary data of this article.