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The C4 pathway has served as a rallying point for somany creative contributions, a focus for attention from so many outstandingresearchers, that any attempt to set the context 30 or 40 years on is doomedto offend the majority of one’s colleagues. However, there is onecolleague whose personal research has set the standards to which we allaspire, and rarely attain; whose achievements have been applauded for morethan a quarter of a century. Hal Hatch has brought great distinction toAustralian plant science.This preamble deals with what is perhaps Australia’s most significantcontribution to modern plant sciences research. It is certainly one of themain reasons why plant sciences research over the last decade or so has hadmore influence internationally (measured by relative citation impact), thanany other field of biological research in Australia (Bourke and Butler 1994;Osmond 1995). Although we may take pride in this quantitative evidence, Ibelieve we share a deeper sense of achievement in C4pathway photosynthetic carbon metabolism. This deeper sense is reflected inthe neatness, the comprehensiveness, that accompanied the unfolding of ourunderstanding in this field. We can identify with Medewar (1968) that, aboveall else, researchers value discoveries first for their explanatory value,second for their clarifying power‘the degree to which they resolve what has hitherto been perplexing’and third, for the feat of originality involved,‘the surprisingness of the solution to which it led’.Thirty or 40 years on, it is good to reflect on where we have come from, whathas been achieved and, as this Symposium has defined, where we will go next.One acknowledged starting point is an incidental observation and an inspiredguess of Haberlandt (1884), whose anatomical insight provoked a morecomprehensive understanding of photosynthetic carbon metabolism in all itsforms. There is no question that the insights and the confidence gainedthrough progress in C4 photosynthesis research led to amature view of photosynthetic carbon metabolism in C3and CAM plants as well. Our perception of leaf photosynthesis has been refinedthrough the integrative philosophy, and growth of research capability, thataccompanied the unfolding of the C4 pathway. We are nowpresented with a plethora of well-defined new problems that tax our creativityin fields of gene expression, cell biology, ecophysiology and evolutionarybiology, all arising from a desire to understand this remarkable pathway.In a musical contribution to an early C4 pathwayconference, it was heralded that Roger Slack wanted a ‘C-throughplant’ (Hatch et al. 1971). After 30 or 40 years,the essence of the C4 pathway is so transparent that itgives insight into some of the big questions in plant biology with the promiseof more to come. Looking back, it seems natural to deal with the growth ofresearch in C4 photosynthesis as phases of a generalisedbiological growth cycle.

C4 Photosynthesis: Thirty or Forty Years On