Identification of Drought-Tolerant Woody Periennials Using Chlorophyll Fluorescence

By G. Percival, Colin N. Sheriffs. Arboriculture & urban forestry, 2002

131 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The purpose of this research was to determine whether chlorophyll fluorescence values obtained from excised leaves of woody plants subjected to dehydration in vitro provided a measurable indicator of whole-plant performance following drought in situ and to gain a greater understanding of alterations in leaf photosynthetic properties between species. Based on reductions in photochemical efficiency, as measured by chlorophyll fluorescence, of detached leaves of 30 woody plants in vitro following 24 hours of dehydration, plants were ranked in order of tolerance. Five species identified as drought tolerant, intermediate, and sensitive were subjected to 70 days of drought under glasshouse conditions. Based on mortality rates at day 70, drought tolerance followed the same order as that obtained in vitro. In addition, reductions in chlorophyll fluorescence parameters and photosynthetic rates of whole plants mirrored tolerance ranking in vitro (i.e., rates declined most rapidly in species identified as dehydration sensitive and least in species identified as drought tolerant). Alteration to leaf chlorophyll fluorescence parameters in the test species highlighted a number of previously unreported effects on the leaf photosynthetic apparatus in response to drought. Results strongly indicate that screening of detached leaf material in vitro using chlorophyll fluorescence can provide a means of gauging the drought tolerance of plants with limited whole-plant experimentation.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/61005efc677fd6b08809bd169ebe153174404334

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Citations in the corpus

The Potential of a Chlorophyll Content SPAD Meter to Quantify Nutrient Stress in Foliar Tissue of Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus), English Oak (Quercus robur), and European Beech (Fagus sylvatica) (2008, background): “…diagnostic system of detecting and quantifying physiologic injury in tree leaves and needles (photosynthetic organs) under low temperatures, salinity, and water stress conditions (Sestak and Stiffel 1997; Percival and Fraser 2001; Percival and Sheriffs 2002; Percival and Henderson 2003).”
QTLs for chlorophyll and chlorophyll fluorescence parameters in barley under post-flowering drought (2008, background): “2000), and provides a rapid and accurate technique of detecting and quantifying plants tolerance to drought stress (Percival and Sheriffs 2002).”
Drought induces opposite changes in the concentration of non-structural carbohydrates of two evergreen Nothofagus species of differential drought resistance (2011, background): “Similar values of Fv/Fm have been reported to cause a seedling mortality higher than 50% in studies assessing drought effects on tree species (e.g., Percival and Sheriffs 2002; Garcia-Plazaola and Becerril 2000).”
Physiological responses to drought stress in wild relatives of wheat: implications for wheat improvement (2017, methodology): “rescence indices such as initial fluorescence (Fo), the maximum quantum efficiency (Fv/Fm) and primary yield of photochemistry (Fv/Fo) is considered an important method for assessing the integrity of the internal mechanism within a leaf during the photosynthetic activities, and provides an accurate ”