why do plants have chlorophyll-b ?
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Though chlorophyll is the major pigment responsible for trapping light,other thylakoid pigments like chlorophyll b, xanthophylls and carotenoids, which arecalled accessory pigments, also absorb light and transfer the energy to chlorophyll a.Indeed, they not only enable a wider range of wavelength of incoming light to beutilized for photosyntesis but also protect chlorophyll a from photo-oxidation.Reaction center chlorophyll-protein complexes are capable of directly absorbing lightand performing charge separation events without other chlorophyll pigments, but theabsorption cross section (the likelihood of absorbing a photon under a given lightintensity) is small. Thus, the remaining chlorophylls in the photosystem and antennapigment protein complexes associated with the photosystems all cooperativelyabsorb and funnel light energy to the reaction center. Besides chlorophyll a, thereare other pigments, called accessory pigments, which occur in these pigment-proteinantenna complexes
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