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Changes in the Physiological and Morphometric Characteristics and Biomass Distribution of Forage Grasses Growing under Conditions of Drought and Silicon Application

Research on mitigating the effects of water scarcity by applying silicon to perennial grasses is still insufficient. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of spring and summer droughts and silicon applications on gas exchange parameters; the morphometric characteristics of root systems;...

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Autores principales: Mastalerczuk, Grażyna, Borawska-Jarmułowicz, Barbara, Darkalt, Ahmad
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9823582/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36616145
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants12010016
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author Mastalerczuk, Grażyna
Borawska-Jarmułowicz, Barbara
Darkalt, Ahmad
author_facet Mastalerczuk, Grażyna
Borawska-Jarmułowicz, Barbara
Darkalt, Ahmad
author_sort Mastalerczuk, Grażyna
collection PubMed
description Research on mitigating the effects of water scarcity by applying silicon to perennial grasses is still insufficient. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of spring and summer droughts and silicon applications on gas exchange parameters; the morphometric characteristics of root systems; and the biomass distribution of Festulolium braunii, Festuca arundinacea, and Lolium perenne cultivars. Plants were treated with a drought during the tillering phase once a year (during spring or summer regrowth) for 21 days. Foliar nutrition with silicon was applied twice under the drought conditions. Grasses in a pot experiment were cut three times during vegetation. The plants that were exposed to the drought had lower values of the gas exchange parameters than those that were well watered. The beneficial effect of silicon was related to the reduction of excessive water loss through transpiration during the spring drought. Under the drought and silicon applications, the water use efficiency, root dry mass, and length increased compared to the control. Moreover, silicon increased the proportion of both the finer and thicker roots in F. braunii and L. perenne, while the distribution of the root diameter changed least in the more resistant F. arundinacea. Silicon also reduced the carbon content in the roots and increased root carbon accumulation. Our results indicated that Si may help perennial forage grasses cope better with drought stress. This was due to the allocation of carbon to the roots to develop the fine root network, increasing the length and root biomass and improving the water use efficiency.
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spelling pubmed-98235822023-01-08 Changes in the Physiological and Morphometric Characteristics and Biomass Distribution of Forage Grasses Growing under Conditions of Drought and Silicon Application Mastalerczuk, Grażyna Borawska-Jarmułowicz, Barbara Darkalt, Ahmad Plants (Basel) Article Research on mitigating the effects of water scarcity by applying silicon to perennial grasses is still insufficient. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of spring and summer droughts and silicon applications on gas exchange parameters; the morphometric characteristics of root systems; and the biomass distribution of Festulolium braunii, Festuca arundinacea, and Lolium perenne cultivars. Plants were treated with a drought during the tillering phase once a year (during spring or summer regrowth) for 21 days. Foliar nutrition with silicon was applied twice under the drought conditions. Grasses in a pot experiment were cut three times during vegetation. The plants that were exposed to the drought had lower values of the gas exchange parameters than those that were well watered. The beneficial effect of silicon was related to the reduction of excessive water loss through transpiration during the spring drought. Under the drought and silicon applications, the water use efficiency, root dry mass, and length increased compared to the control. Moreover, silicon increased the proportion of both the finer and thicker roots in F. braunii and L. perenne, while the distribution of the root diameter changed least in the more resistant F. arundinacea. Silicon also reduced the carbon content in the roots and increased root carbon accumulation. Our results indicated that Si may help perennial forage grasses cope better with drought stress. This was due to the allocation of carbon to the roots to develop the fine root network, increasing the length and root biomass and improving the water use efficiency. MDPI 2022-12-20 /pmc/articles/PMC9823582/ /pubmed/36616145 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants12010016 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Mastalerczuk, Grażyna
Borawska-Jarmułowicz, Barbara
Darkalt, Ahmad
Changes in the Physiological and Morphometric Characteristics and Biomass Distribution of Forage Grasses Growing under Conditions of Drought and Silicon Application
title Changes in the Physiological and Morphometric Characteristics and Biomass Distribution of Forage Grasses Growing under Conditions of Drought and Silicon Application
title_full Changes in the Physiological and Morphometric Characteristics and Biomass Distribution of Forage Grasses Growing under Conditions of Drought and Silicon Application
title_fullStr Changes in the Physiological and Morphometric Characteristics and Biomass Distribution of Forage Grasses Growing under Conditions of Drought and Silicon Application
title_full_unstemmed Changes in the Physiological and Morphometric Characteristics and Biomass Distribution of Forage Grasses Growing under Conditions of Drought and Silicon Application
title_short Changes in the Physiological and Morphometric Characteristics and Biomass Distribution of Forage Grasses Growing under Conditions of Drought and Silicon Application
title_sort changes in the physiological and morphometric characteristics and biomass distribution of forage grasses growing under conditions of drought and silicon application
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9823582/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36616145
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants12010016
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