RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Root xylem in three woody angiosperm species is not more vulnerable to embolism than stem xylem
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.03.30.017343
DO 10.1101/2020.03.30.017343
A1 Min Wu
A1 Ya Zhang
A1 Thais Oya
A1 Carmen Regina Marcati
A1 Luciano Pereira
A1 Steven Jansen
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/03/31/2020.03.30.017343.abstract
AB Aims Since plants are compartmentalised organisms, failure of their hydraulic transport system could differ between organs. We test here whether xylem tissue of stems and roots differ in their drought-induced embolism resistance, and whether intact roots are equally resistant to embolism than root segments.Methods Embolism resistance of stem and root xylem was measured based on the pneumatic technique for Acer campestre, A. pseudoplatanus and Corylus avellana, comparing also intact roots and root segments of C. avellana. Moreover, we compared anatomical features such as interconduit pit membrane between roots and stems.Results We found a higher embolism resistance for roots than stems, although a significant difference was only found for A. pseudoplatanus. Interconduit pit membrane thickness was similar for both organs of the two Acer species, but pit membranes were thicker in roots than stems of C. avellana. Also, embolism resistance of an intact root network was similar to thick root segments for C. avellana.Conclusion Our observations show that root xylem is not more vulnerable to embolism than stem xylem, although more species need to be studied to test if this finding can be generalised. We also demonstrated that the pneumatic method can be applied to non-terminal plant samples.