Whole-Plant: Environmental and Ecophysiological

Ecophysiology, also known as environmental physiology or physiological ecology, is a branch of biology that analyses how an organism's physiology reacts to its surroundings. It has a lot in common with comparative and evolutionary physiology.

Ecophysiology is primarily concerned with two topics: mechanisms (how plants respond to environmental change) and scaling or integration (how plant responses to highly variable conditions, such as gradients from full sun to 95 percent shade within tree canopies, are coordinated with one another), and how their combined effect on plant growth and gas exchange can be understood on a large scale.

The biotic and abiotic elements that govern forage growth and development are referred to as the plant environment. Plants rarely grow in ideal conditions; instead, they are subjected to environmental changes and stresses that influence their morphology, rate of development, yield, and quality.