JXB Advance Access originally published online on August 28, 2006
Journal of Experimental Botany 2006 57(12):3349-3357; doi:10.1093/jxb/erl099
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© 2006 The Author(s).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.This paper is available online free of all access charges (see http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/open_access.html for further details)
RESEARCH PAPER |
Anti-transpirant activity in xylem sap from flooded tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) plants is not due to pH-mediated redistributions of root- or shoot-sourced ABA
East Malling Research, New Road, East Malling, Kent ME19 6BJ, UK
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mark.else{at}emr.ac.uk
In flooded soils, the rapid effects of decreasing oxygen availability on root metabolic activity are likely to generate many potential chemical signals that may impact on stomatal apertures. Detached leaf transpiration tests showed that filtered xylem sap, collected at realistic flow rates from plants flooded for 2 h and 4 h, contained one or more factors that reduced stomatal apertures. The closure could not be attributed to increased root output of the glucose ester of abscisic acid (ABA-GE), since concentrations and deliveries of ABA conjugates were unaffected by soil flooding. Although xylem sap collected from the shoot base of detopped flooded plants became more alkaline within 2 h of flooding, this rapid pH change of 0.5 units did not alter partitioning of root-sourced ABA sufficiently to prompt a transient increase in xylem ABA delivery. More shoot-sourced ABA was detected in the xylem when excised petiole sections were perfused with pH 7 buffer, compared with pH 6 buffer. Sap collected from the fifth oldest leaf of ‘intact’ well-drained plants and plants flooded for 3 h was more alkaline, by 
0.4 pH units, than sap collected from the shoot base. Accordingly, xylem [ABA] was increased 2-fold in sap collected from the fifth oldest petiole compared with the shoot base of flooded plants. However, water loss from transpiring, detached leaves was not reduced when the pH of the feeding solution containing 3-h-flooded [ABA] was increased from 6.7 to 7.1 Thus, the extent of the pH-mediated, shoot-sourced ABA redistribution was not sufficient to raise xylem [ABA] to physiologically active levels. Using a detached epidermis bioassay, significant non-ABA anti-transpirant activity was also detected in xylem sap collected at intervals during the first 24 h of soil flooding.
Key words: ABA, ABA-GE, pH, signalling, soil flooding, stomatal closure, tomato, xylem sap
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  S. Wilkinson and W. J. Davies Manipulation of the apoplastic pH of intact plants mimics stomatal and growth responses to water availability and microclimatic variation J. Exp. Bot., February 13, 2008; (2008) erm338v1. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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