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Tree Physiology Advance Access originally published online on October 13, 2009
Tree Physiology 2009 29(12):1551-1561; doi:10.1093/treephys/tpp085
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Water deficit affects mesophyll limitation of leaves more strongly in sun than in shade in two contrasting Picea asperata populations

Baoli Duan1, Yan Li1,3, Xiaolu Zhang1, Helena Korpelainen4 and Chunyang Li1,2

1 Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 416, Chengdu 610041, China
2 Corresponding author (licy{at}cib.ac.cn)
3 Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, China
4 Department of Applied Biology, P.O. Box 27, FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland


  Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the response of internal conductance to CO2 (gi) to soil water deficit and contrasting light conditions, and their consequences on photosynthetic physiology in two Picea asperata Mast. populations originating from wet and dry climate regions of China. Four-year-old trees were subjected to two light treatments (30% and 100% of full sunlight) and two watering regimes (well watered, drought) for 2 years. In both tested populations, drought significantly decreased gi and the net photosynthesis rate (A) and increased carbon isotope composition ({delta}13C) values in both light treatments, in particular in the sun. Moreover, drought resulted in a significantly higher relative limitation due to stomatal conductance (Ls) in both light treatments and higher relative limitation due to internal conductance (Li) and abscisic acid (ABA) in the sun plants. The results also showed that Li (0.26–0.47) was always greater than Ls (0.12–0.28). On the other hand, drought significantly decreased the ratio of chloroplastic to internal CO2 concentration (Cc/Ci), photosynthetic nitrogen utilization efficiency (PNUE) and total biomass in the sun plants of the wet climate population, whereas there were no significant changes in these parameters in the dry climate population. Our results also showed that the dry climate population possessed higher {delta}13C values with higher ratio of internal conductance to stomatal conductance (gi/gs), suggesting that increasing the gi/gs ratio enhances water-use efficiency (WUE) in plants evolved in arid environments. Thus, we propose that the use of the gi/gs parameter to screen P. asperata plants with higher water deficit tolerance is certainly worthy of consideration. Furthermore, gi is an important variable, which reflects the population differences in PNUE, and it should thus be included in plant physiological investigations related to leaf economics.

Keywords: carbon isotope discrimination, internal conductance, limitation analysis, photosynthesis, stomatal conductance

Received May 19, 2009; Accepted September 11, 2009


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