Application of the Gompertz equation for the study of xylem cell development

By Sergio Rossi, Annie Deslauriers, H. Morin. 2003

253 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary To assess daily relationships between xylem development and the environment, precise knowledge of tree-ring development is required. This includes accurate estimations of the rate and duration of the cell enlargement and wall thickening phases. This paper presents an application where the Gompertz equation is used to calculate cell number increase and to estimate both the rates and periods of the differentiation phases on a daily scale during the growing season. Tests were performed on two coniferous species, Abies balsamea (L.) Mill. and Pinus cembra L., growing in the Canadian boreal forest and on the Italian Alpine treeline respectively. Wood micro-cores, including the most recent tree-rings, were collected during the growing season of 2001. Cross-sections were cut with a microtome and stained with cresyl fast violet to differentiate xylem cells of the growing tree-ring. The number of cells within the zones of radial cell enlargement, secondary wall thickening and mature xylem were counted. The normalised cell number increases were fitted into a Gompertz function [y=f(t)]. The results showed that the function provided suitable descriptions of the cell increase for both Abies balsamea and Pinus cembra with R2 ranging between 0.60 and 0.90. Subsequently, to assess the development phases in time, the Gompertz equation was expressed in function of the independent variable [t=f(y)]. The use of only one equation for the estimation of both cell division and differentiation throughout the vegetative season has demonstrated to be an important improvement.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fa20b0b5d2f9fb1eaccd1faf6b45679f9458e449

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Citations in the corpus

TREPHOR: A NEW TOOL FOR SAMPLING MICROCORES FROM TREE STEMS (2006, background): “These studies are principally based on repeated observations of the developing tree rings on wood samples during the growing season (Bäucker et al. 1998; Camarero et al. 1998; Horacek et al. 1999; Deslauriers et al. 2003; Rossi et al. 2003; Jones et al. 2004).”
Tree-ring variation, wood formation and phenology of beech (Fagus sylvatica) from a representative site in Slovenia, SE Central Europe (2008, unknown): “The formation of the 2006 xylem growth ring was then analysed with the Gompertz function (Zeide 1993, Zeide 2004; Deslauriers et al. 2003a, b; Rossi et al. 2003) according to the equation:”
From xylogenesis to tree rings: wood traits to investigate tree response to environmental changes (2019, background): “dynamics during the main part of the growing season (Camarero et al. 1998; Rossi et al. 2003).”
Effects of a 20-day-long dry period on cambial and apical meristem growth in Abies balsamea seedlings (2009, background): “Although greenhouse and pot conditions represent artificial environments, the dynamics and timing of xylem formation agreed with the previously observed growth patterns of adult balsam fir (Deslauriers et al. 2003a; Rossi et al. 2003).”
ASSESSMENT OF CAMBIAL ACTIVITY AND XYLOGENESIS BY MICROSAMPLING TREE SPECIES: AN EXAMPLE AT THE ALPINE TIMBERLINE (2006, methodology): “A precise description of the period of wood formation allows the days spent in differentiation by each cell to be estimated (Wodzicki 1971; Horacek et al. 1999; Rossi et al. 2003 ).”
Seasonal Dynamics of Wood Formation in Pinus Halepensis from Dry and Semi-Arid Ecosystems in Spain (2007, methodology): “To enable comparison of different trees from different sites, with different growth potentials we standardized the observed number of cells in each sample using a modified procedure of Rossi et al. (2003): Am Ncij = Nij * –––– (Eqn.”