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Contrasting responses of crop legumes and cereals to nitrogen availability.

  • Adams MA Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology, Swinburne University, PO Box 218, Hawthorn, Vic, 3122, Australia.
  • Buckley TN Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, One Shields Ave, Davis, CA, 95616, USA.
  • Salter WT School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, The University of Sydney, 380 Werombi Rd, Camden, NSW, 2570, Australia.
  • Buchmann N ETH Zurich, Universitätstrasse 2, 8092, Zürich, Switzerland.
  • Blessing CH School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, The University of Sydney, 380 Werombi Rd, Camden, NSW, 2570, Australia.
  • Turnbull TL School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, The University of Sydney, 380 Werombi Rd, Camden, NSW, 2570, Australia.
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  • 2017-11-28
Published in:
  • The New phytologist. - 2018
breeding
crops
legumes
photosynthesis
stomatal conductance
water-use efficiency (WUE)
Crops, Agricultural
Edible Grain
Fabaceae
Nitrogen
Photosynthesis
Plant Stomata
Water
English In nonagricultural systems, the relationship between intrinsic water-use efficiency (WUEi ) and leaf nitrogen (Narea ) is known to be stronger for legumes than for nonlegumes. We tested whether these relationships are retained for major agricultural legumes and nonlegumes. We compared the response to N nutrition of WUEi (and its component parts, photosynthesis (Asat ) and stomatal conductance (gs )) for legumes Cicer arietinum, Glycine max, Lupinus alba and Vicia faba, nonlegume dicots Brassica napus and Helianthus annus, and nonlegume cereals Hordeum vulgare and Triticum aestivum. Surprisingly, and in contrast to studied cereals and nonlegume dicots, Narea was positively related to photosynthesis in the legumes, explaining nearly half of the variance in Asat . WUEi was tightly coupled to Narea for agricultural legumes and nonlegume dicots, but not for cereal crops. Our analysis suggests that breeding efforts to reduce gs in legumes could increase WUEi by 120-218% while maintaining Asat at nonlegume values. Physiologically informed breeding of legumes can enhance sustainable agriculture by reducing requirements for water and N.
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  • English
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https://sonar.ch/global/documents/139930
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