Article,

Does ear C sink strength contribute to overcoming photosynthetic acclimation of wheat plants exposed to elevated CO2?

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Journal of experimental botany, 62 (11): 3957--3969 (July 2011)
DOI: 10.1093/jxb/err095

Abstract

Wheat plants (Triticum durum Desf., cv. Regallo) were grown in the field to study the effects of contrasting CO(2) conditions (700 versus 370 μmol mol(-1)) on growth, photosynthetic performance, and C management during the post-anthesis period. The aim was to test whether a restricted capacity of sink organs to utilize photosynthates drives a loss of photosynthetic capacity in elevated CO(2). The ambient (13)C/(12)C isotopic composition (δ(13)C) of air CO(2) was changed from -10.2‰ in ambient CO(2) to -23.6‰ under elevated CO(2) between the 7th and the 14th days after anthesis in order to study C assimilation and partitioning between leaves and ears. Elevated CO(2) had no significant effect on biomass production and grain filling, and caused an accumulation of C compounds in leaves. This was accompanied by up-regulation of phosphoglycerate mutase and ATP synthase protein content, together with down-regulation of adenosine diphosphate glucose pyrophosphatase protein. Growth in elevated CO(2) negatively affected Rubisco and Rubisco activase protein content and induced photosynthetic down-regulation. CO(2) enrichment caused a specific decrease in Rubisco content, together with decreases in the amino acid and total N content of leaves. The C labelling revealed that in flag leaves, part of the C fixed during grain filling was stored as starch and structural C compounds whereas the rest of the labelled C (mainly in the form of soluble sugars) was completely respired 48 h after the end of labelling. Although labelled C was not detected in the δ(13)C of ear total organic matter and respired CO(2), soluble sugar δ(13)C revealed that a small amount of labelled C reached the ear. The (12)CO(2) labelling suggests that during the beginning of post-anthesis the ear did not contribute towards overcoming flag leaf carbohydrate accumulation, and this had a consequent effect on protein expression and photosynthetic acclimation.

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