All of these plants are able to adapt to arid, high heat and light environmental conditions. https://www.khanacademy.org › ... › a › c3-c4-and-cam-plants-agriculture The additional C4 step holds CO2. Photorespiration is a process that occurs in plants where oxygen is … The difference is that the stomata are open at night to have a controlled release of water vapor to drive the upward pull of water and dissolved nutrients in transpiration. Like C4 plants, CAM plants use both C4 and C3 pathways. C4 plants relocate the CO2 molecules to minimize photorespiration while CAM plants choose when to extract CO2 from the environment. The main difference between C3, C4 and CAM plants is the way these plants minimize water loss. The primary difference between C4 and CAM plants transfer the CO2 molecules to lessen photorespiration while CAM plants choose when to extract CO2 from the environment. This 3 minute tutorial discusses the differences between the three types of photosynthesis: C3, C4 and CAM. CO2 is taken in through stoma on leaves of plants. CAM plants are C4 so hold the CO2 taken in while the stomata are open. However, H2O is also lost at the same time when stoma is opened. Photosynthesis is, broadly speaking, a process that takes energy from light and produces sugar molecules out of water and carbon dioxide ([math]CO_2[/math]). In C4 plants, the two pathways take place in different cells. Crassulacean Acid Metabolism plants (CAM plants) also use C3 and C4 cycles for CO2 fixation. In the day, these high levels of CO2 drive the Calvin cycle and minimize photorespiration. Thus, this poses a big problem for desert plants that have to conserve its water. The main difference between C3 C4 and CAM photosynthesis is that C3 photosynthesis produces a three-carbon compound via the Calvin cycle, and C4 photosynthesis produces an intermediate four-carbon compound, which split into a three-carbon compound for the Calvin cycle, whereas CAM photosynthesis gathers sunlight during the day and fix carbon dioxide at night. They differ from C4 plants in that they use the C4 pathway at night and the C3 pathway during the day within the same cells. But when the photosynthetic plant, prior going to the C3 pathway, produces oxaloacetic acid (OAA) or 4 -carbon compound as their first stable product is called as C4 or Hatch and Slack pathway.But when the plants absorb the energy of the sunlight at the day time and use this energy for the assimilation or fixing the carbon dioxide at night time is called as crassulacean acid metabolism or CAM. 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