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Photosynthetic Performance and Water-Use-Efficiency in Grasses

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A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Water Use and Irrigation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2020) | Viewed by 15064

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Samuel Taylor

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Guest Editor

Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Interests: physiology and ecophysiology of grasses; photosynthesis; water relations; plant growth analysis; leaf gas exchange

Dr. Meisha Holloway-Phillips

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Guest Editor

Department of Environmental Sciences - Botany, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
Interests: plant CO₂ and H₂O exchange; stable isotopes; mesophyll conductance; hydraulic conductance

Dr. Andrew Merchant

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Guest Editor

Centre for Carbon Water and Food, The University of Sydney, 380 Werombi road, Camden, 2570 NSW, Australia
Interests: plant physiology; isotopes; food chemistry; plant water relations; mass spectrometry

Dr. Gemma Molero

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Guest Editor

International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Texcoco, Mexico
Interests: wheat physiology for yield enhancement; photosynthesis; genetic screening; field phenotyping

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Grasses produce key staple grains, sugars, fodder, feedstocks, and materials that support manufacturing and construction, as well as being critical to land reclamation. Historical ecological impacts of agriculture have been tied to the introduction and improvement of agronomically important grasses, and the future development of grass crops will influence agricultural responses to climate change and the challenge of improving the sustainability of resources.

Grasses demonstrate both evolutionary and ecological flexibility, having repeatedly evolved novel photosynthetic systems and unique morphological and life-history strategies, allowing them to occupy almost every habitat on Earth. The success of grasses in agricultural production has been the result of intensive yield selection and improved agronomic practices, yet many aspects of physiology and phenology unique to grasses remain understudied.

Critical insights are sought into how photosynthetic performance and the efficiency of water use have impacted and may impact grass agronomic management. Reviews, experimental and/or modelling studies will quantitatively assess the impacts of physiology, allocation, and/or phenology, at tissue, organ, plant, canopy, and/or crop levels. Contexts include domestication and selection histories, genetic variation, novel strategies for crop improvement, interspecific comparisons, and cropping systems incorporating grasses.

Dr. Samuel Taylor
Dr. Meisha Holloway-Phillips
Dr. Andrew Merchant
Dr. Gemma Molero
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

grasses
photosynthesis
water use
agronomy
crop improvement
forage
fodder
grain
feedstock

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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19 pages, 3591 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Carbon Isotope Composition and the NDVI as Phenotyping Approaches for Drought Adaptation in Durum Wheat: Beyond Trait Selection

by Rut Sanchez-Bragado, Maria Newcomb, Fadia Chairi, Giuseppe Emanuele Condorelli, Richard W. Ward, Jeffrey W. White, Marco Maccaferri, Roberto Tuberosa, Jose Luis Araus and Maria Dolors Serret Molins

Agronomy 2020, 10(11), 1679; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy10111679 - 29 Oct 2020

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2094

Abstract

High-throughput phenotyping platforms provide valuable opportunities to investigate biomass and drought-adaptive traits. We explored the capacity of traits associated with drought adaptation such as aerial measurements of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and carbon isotope composition (δ¹³C) determined at the leaf level to predict genetic variation in biomass. A panel of 248 elite durum wheat accessions was grown at the Maricopa Phenotyping platform (US) under well-watered conditions until anthesis, and then irrigation was stopped and plot biomass was harvested about three weeks later. Globally, the δ¹³C values increased from the first to the second sampling date, in keeping with the imposition of progressive water stress. Additionally, δ¹³C was negatively correlated with final biomass, and the correlation increased at the second sampling, suggesting that accessions with lower water-use efficiency maintained better water status and, thus, performed better. Flowering time affected NDVI predictions of biomass, revealing the importance of developmental stage when measuring the NDVI and the effect that phenology has on its accuracy when monitoring genotypic adaptation to specific environments. The results indicate that in addition to choosing the optimal phenotypic traits, the time at which they are assessed, and avoiding a wide genotypic range in phenology is crucial. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Photosynthetic Performance and Water-Use-Efficiency in Grasses)

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19 pages, 2644 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Warming Reduces Net Carbon Gain and Productivity in Medicago sativa L. and Festuca arundinacea

by Vinod Jacob, Haiyang Zhang, Amber C. Churchill, Jinyan Yang, Brendan Choat, Belinda E. Medlyn, Sally A. Power and David T. Tissue

Agronomy 2020, 10(10), 1601; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy10101601 - 19 Oct 2020

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2258

Abstract

High temperature stress imposes constraints on the productivity of agricultural systems, such as pastures, and predicted increases in global temperatures are set to exacerbate these limitations. Here, we sought to understand the impact of warmer growth temperature on gas exchange and net primary productivity for two widely cultivated pasture species. We grew a C₃ legume, Medicago sativa (lucerne), and a C₃ grass, Festuca arundinacea Schreb. (tall fescue), in a climate-controlled facility exposed to two temperature treatments (ambient: 26 °C, aT; elevated: 30 °C, eT). Soil water was maintained at non-limiting conditions in both temperature treatments to control for the confounding effects of warming on soil moisture. We found that warming reduced photosynthetic capacity and increased leaf dark respiration (R_dark) in lucerne, while tall fescue showed little physiological change at the leaf level, but increased ecosystem respiration (R_eco). Growth temperature had no significant impact on the thermal optimum of photosynthesis (T_opt) or water use efficiency in either species. Both species exhibited significant reductions in productivity with warming; lucerne had greater reductions in shoot biomass, while tall fescue had greater reductions in root biomass. Our results highlight the potential for significant declines in pasture productivity associated with even modest increases in average temperature and highlights the need for suitable management strategies and implementation of more heat-resistant cultivars. Improvements in photosynthetic performance for greater heat tolerance in lucerne, and traits associated with biomass allocation and root performance at higher temperatures in tall fescue, should be the focus for improving high temperature resistance in these plant species. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Photosynthetic Performance and Water-Use-Efficiency in Grasses)

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21 pages, 2799 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

Estimating Organ Contribution to Grain Filling and Potential for Source Upregulation in Wheat Cultivars with a Contrasting Source–Sink Balance

by Carolina Rivera-Amado, Gemma Molero, Eliseo Trujillo-Negrellos, Matthew Reynolds and John Foulkes

Agronomy 2020, 10(10), 1527; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy10101527 - 08 Oct 2020

Cited by 22 | Viewed by 4266

Abstract

Grain filling may be limited by the joint source and sink capacity in modern wheat cultivars, indicating a need to research the co-limitation of yield by both photosynthesis and the number and potential size of grains. The extent to which the post-anthesis source may be limiting final grain size can be estimated by partial degraining of spikes, while defoliation and shading treatments can be useful to estimate if any excess photosynthetic capacity exists. In the current study, degraining was applied to a set of 26 elite spring wheat cultivars from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)’s core germplasm (CIMCOG) panel, while lamina defoliation and shading through stem-and-leaf-sheath covering treatments were applied to a subset of the same cultivars. Responses to source treatments in grain weight, pre-anthesis reserve contribution to grain weight, dry-matter translocation efficiency, and flag-leaf and spike photosynthetic rate were measured and compared to an unmanipulated control treatment. Grain weight responses to degraining among cultivars ranged from no response to increases of 28%, suggesting a range of responses from sink limitation, to probable source and sink co-limitation of grain growth. Grain weight’s response to degraining increased linearly with the years of cultivar release from 1966 to 2009, indicating that the current highest yield potential CIMMYT spring wheats have a co-limitation of grain growth by source and sink. This may have been due to an increase in grain sink strength with years of cultivar release with no commensurate increase in post-anthesis source capacity. The relatively low decreases in grain weight with defoliation compared to decreases in light interception by defoliation indicated that sink limitation was still likely predominating in the cultivars with co-limitation. The stem-and-leaf-sheath covering treatment decreased grain weight by nearly 10%, indicating that stem-and-leafsheath photosynthesis plays a key role in grain growth during grain filling. In addition, pre-anthesis reserve contribution to grain weight was increased by ca. 50% in response to lamina defoliation. Our results showed that increasing the post-anthesis source capacity, through increases in stem-and-leaf-sheath photosynthetic rate during grain filling and pre-anthesis reserve contribution to grain weight, is an important objective in enhancing yield potential in wheat through maintaining a source–sink balance. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Photosynthetic Performance and Water-Use-Efficiency in Grasses)

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15 pages, 2726 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Maintenance of Photosynthesis as Leaves Age Improves Whole Plant Water Use Efficiency in an Australian Wheat Cultivar

by Bailey Kretzler, Cristina Rodrigues Gabriel Sales, Michal Karady, Elizabete Carmo-Silva and Ian C. Dodd

Agronomy 2020, 10(8), 1102; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy10081102 - 30 Jul 2020

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3425

Abstract

Leaf-level water use efficiency (WUE_i) is often used to predict whole plant water use efficiency (WUE_wp), however these measures rarely correlate. A better understanding of the underlying physiological relationship between WUE_i and WUE_wp would enable efficient phenotyping of this important plant trait to inform future crop breeding efforts. Although WUE_i varies across leaf age and position, less is understood about the regulatory mechanisms. WUE_i and WUE_wp were determined in Australian (cv. Krichauff) and UK (cv. Gatsby) wheat cultivars. Leaf gas exchange was measured as leaves aged and evaluated in relation to foliar abscisic acid (ABA) and 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC) concentration, chlorophyll content and Rubisco activity. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) assimilation (A) declined more rapidly as leaves aged in the lower WUE_wp genotype Gatsby. Both ACC concentration and Rubisco activity declined as leaves aged, but neither explained the variation in A. Further, stomatal conductance (g_s) and stomatal sensitivity to ABA were unchanged as leaves aged, therefore WUE_i was lowest in Gatsby. Maintenance of A as the leaves aged in the Australian cultivar Krichauff enabled greater biomass production even as water loss continued similarly in both genotypes, resulting in higher WUE_wp. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Photosynthetic Performance and Water-Use-Efficiency in Grasses)

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Review

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14 pages, 1228 KiB

Open AccessReview

A Review of Modeled Water Use Efficiency of Highly Productive Perennial Grasses Useful for Bioenergy

by James R. Kiniry and Sumin Kim

Agronomy 2020, 10(3), 328; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy10030328 - 01 Mar 2020

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2317

Abstract

Whole plant productivity is obviously the ultimate product of leaf photosynthesis and this has led to numerous efforts to relate the two. However, often with perennial grasses, plant productivity is more sink-limited than source-limited, causing the linkage between the photosynthetic rate and productivity to be weak or nonexistent. This has led to a different approach, characterizing plant productivity in terms of the efficiency of intercepted light use in producing biomass, also called radiation use efficiency. Likewise, the efficiency of the use of water to produce plant biomass, or water use efficiency, has been the object of much interest. The use of a simulation model to quantify biomass, using radiation use efficiency in parallel with a daily water balance simulation, allows for the effective calculation of water use efficiency. In this project, the process of determining radiation use efficiency with field data is described, as well as example values for highly productive perennial grasses useful for feedstock for bioenergy. In addition, values of water use efficiency for these grasses are reported and compared with other perennial grasses and common cultivated crops. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Photosynthetic Performance and Water-Use-Efficiency in Grasses)

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