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JXB Advance Access originally published online on July 13, 2009
Journal of Experimental Botany 2009 60(13):3737-3749; doi:10.1093/jxb/erp216
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© 2009 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

Are plant growth and photosynthesis limited by pre-drought following rewatering in grass?

Zhenzhu Xu1,3, Guangsheng Zhou1,2,* and Hideyuki Shimizu3

1State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Science, 20 Nanxincun, Xiangshan, Beijing 100093, PR China
2Institute of Atmospheric Environment, China Meteorological Administration, Shenyang 110016, PR China
3Asian Environment Research Group, National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), 16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8506, Japan

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: gszhou{at}ibcas.ac.cn; xuzz{at}ibcas.ac.cn

Although the relationship between grassland productivity and soil water status has been extensively researched, the responses of plant growth and photosynthetic physiological processes to long-term drought and rewatering are not fully understood. Here, the perennial grass (Leymus chinensis), predominantly distributed in the Euro-Asia steppe, was used as an experimental plant for an irrigation manipulation experiment involving five soil moisture levels [75–80, 60–75, 50–60, 35–50, and 25–35% of soil relative water content (SRWC), i.e. the ratio between present soil moisture and field capacity] to examine the effects of soil drought and rewatering on plant biomass, relative growth rate (RGR), and photosynthetic potential. The recovery of plant biomass following rewatering was lower for the plants that had experienced previous drought compared with the controls; the extent of recovery was proportional to the intensity of soil drought. However, the plant RGR, leaf photosynthesis, and light use potential were markedly stimulated by the previous drought, depending on drought intensity, whereas stomatal conductance (gs) achieved only partial recovery. The results indicated that gs may be responsible for regulating actual photosynthetic efficiency. It is assumed that the new plant growth and photosynthetic potential enhanced by pre-drought following rewatering may try to overcompensate the great loss of the plant's net primary production due to the pre-drought effect. The present results highlight the episodic effects of drought on grass growth and photosynthesis. This study will assist in understanding how degraded ecosystems can potentially cope with climate change.

Key words: Chlorophyll fluorescence, gas exchange, grassland ecosystem, relative plant growth rate (RGR), rewatering, water stress

Received 4 December 2008; Revised 31 May 2009 Accepted 15 June 2009


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