Journal of Experimental Botany, Vol. 52, No. 364, pp. 2135-2142,
November 1, 2001
© 2001 Oxford University Press
Original Papers |
Stem diameter variations and cold hardiness in walnut trees
1 UMR PIAF (INRA, Université Blaise Pascal), Site INRA de Crouelle, 234 av. du Brezet, F-63039 Clermont-Ferrand Cedex 2, France
2 Department of Plant Biology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-1312, USA
Received 8 March 2001; Accepted 2 July 2001
| Abstract |
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The effect of freezing temperatures on stem diameter was measured in the field and in climatic chambers using linear variable differential transformers (LVDT sensors). In acclimated stems, there was reversible stem shrinkage associated with freezethaw cycles. The maximum shrinkage correlated with stem diameter (thickness of the bark). The wood was responsible for only 15% of the shrinkage associated with a freeze event, and experiments with isolated bark showed that connection with the wood was not necessary for most of the freeze-induced shrinkage to occur. Considering the amount of stem shrinkage associated with summer drought in walnut, the amount of contraction of the bark with freezing was actually much less than might be predicted by water relations theory. Reversible stem shrinkage occurred in living tissues, but not in autoclaved tissues. For the latter, swelling was observed with freezing and this swelling could be explained by the bark alone. Similar swelling was observed during September and October for non-acclimated plants. Water was lost with each freezethaw cycle starting with the first, and freezing injury of the bark, with discoloration of tissues, was also observed in non-acclimated plants. Given that the diameter fluctuation patterns were dramatically different for acclimated versus non-acclimated plants, and for living versus autoclaved tissues, LVDT sensors could represent a novel, non-invasive approach to testing cold hardiness.
Key words: Cold hardiness, frost hardiness, freezing avoidance, diameter variation, walnut.
| Introduction |
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It is commonly recognized that low temperatures are a major limiting factor that may explain species distribution in cold climates (Parker, 1963
The same phenomenon has been used to explain why the living bark of trees shrinks at freezing temperatures (Wiegand, 1906
; Winget and Kozlowski, 1964
). Although this mechanism was reported in the 19th century (Hoffmann, 1857
; Sachs, 1860
; Friedrich, 1897
), it has received little attention until recently (Loris et al., 1999
; Zweifel and Häsler, 2000
). The latter authors showed reversible shrinkage of bark of mature subalpine conifers and concluded there was transport of water between bark and wood and that, when ice crystals melted, water returned to the living cells of the bark.
Plants of temperate zones undergo cyclic change in freezing tolerance each year. Classically, cold acclimation with the cessation of growth in the autumn is initiated by certain environmental stimuli (e.g. decreased daylength, changes in light quality, decreasing temperature, and drought stress) and during the spring, plants begin to deacclimate (Bowers, 1994
). In contrast, non-acclimated plants have cell death at freezing temperatures, caused by disruption of cell membranes and other cellular components (Burke et al., 1976
; Steponkus, 1984
). This disruption is usually manifested as a flaccidity and/or discoloration of the affected tissues (Burke et al., 1976
; Rodrigo, 2000
).
In the present study, apparent extracellular freezing was observed by stem diameter changes on orchard trees of walnut in the field. To evaluate frost acclimation, potted trees or stem segment were submitted to various freezing experiments in a climatic chamber. The authors hypothesize that (1) for acclimated plants, similar reversible shrinkage of bark would be observed in orchard trees, potted trees and isolated stem segments; (2) compared to acclimated trees, non-acclimated trees would show no reversible shrinkage of bark due to cell death and water loss; and (3) with autoclave treatments to cause cell death, no shrinkage event would be observed with freeze events because no differential ice crystal formation would take place. The determination of how much of the stem shrinkage could be attributed to changes within the bark tissue, that is, changes that were independent of the radial supply of water from the xylem, was also desirable.
Linear variable differential transformers (LVDT sensors) have been successfully used as a non-invasive method to detect the water status of plants (Klepper et al., 1971
; McBurney and Costigan, 1984
; Garnier and Berger, 1985
; Wronski et al., 1985
; Cochard et al., 2001
). In testing the above hypotheses with regard to freezing, it is possible that LVDTs could also offer a novel approach to the detection of freezing and freezing damage in plants.
| Materials and methods |
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In the field and throughout various experiments stem diameter variations were continuously monitored with LVDT devices (models DF 2.5 and DF 5, Solartron Metrology, Massy, France) with sensitivity ±1 µm. Stem, air, and in some cases soil temperatures were measured with copperconstantan thermocouples and both temperatures and LVDT data were recorded with data loggers (DL2e, Delta T devices, UK). For longer-term field measurements, data were recorded as 1 h averages and averaged at 10 min intervals, whereas for laboratory cooling experiments, data were recorded as 5 min averages and averaged at 1 min intervals.
Temperature and diameter variations measurements were made on excised stems of orchard walnut trees (Juglans regia L. cv. Franquette scions on wild walnut root stocks) in the winters of 199798, 199899 and 19992000. The trees were grown outdoors at the INRA PIAF station near Clermont-Ferrand, in south-central France and they were 17 years old in 1998. Stem segments of twigs were submitted to several freezethaw cycles in a temperature-controlled chamber with LVDT sensors, GelistaTM (INRA, France). The chamber was designed to hold ten excised stem segments of 5 cm in length and 1 cm in diameter, each with an LVDT device. Cooling and warming cycles were computer-controlled by a circulator bath (Ministat Huber: -25 °C to +120 °C) with an external Pt100 into the chamber, with a linear rate of cooling and warming of 5 °C h-1, and with freezethaw cycles (0, -10 °C, 0 °C) repeated up to 10 times.
In some cases the bark was neatly peeled, intact, from the stem, down to the vascular cambium. Thus it was possible to compare diameter fluctuations for the following tissues: (1) stem segments with bark on the stem, (2) isolated bark strips (1 cm widex2 cm long), and (3) stem segments with the bark removed. In some cases the stem segment and/or isolated bark was autoclaved to kill all living cells. A minimum of ten replicates for each case were compared with regard to diameter fluctuations during freezethaw cycles. As a reference, for one of the aforementioned orchard trees, temperature and diameter variations were measured on the trunk, branches and smaller stems in the field during the winter of 199798, in parallel with temperature measurements of the air, trunk, branch, and stem.
In addition to experiments on orchard trees, 5-year-old potted plants of walnut (Juglans regia L. cv. Franquette scions on wild walnut root stocks) were used for freezing experiments during the period from October 1998 to the end of May 1999. The grafted plants were grown in individual 33 l well-drained containers filled with a mixture of peat (33%) and clay soil (67%), they were fertilized annually with 10 g NH4NO3 and continuously drip-irrigated to field capacity. Twelve potted trees were grown outdoors until September 1998, when they were put into a cool greenhouse, in which the temperatures were usually kept the same as outdoors. However, air temperatures in the greenhouses were continuously recorded and a heating system was automatically turned on when temperatures dropped to 0 °C, warming the greenhouse to temperatures to as high as 3 °C. Thus the trees were exposed to cool temperatures, but not to sub-zero temperatures, in the autumn and winter of 199899, prior to the freezing experiments. As a result, the mean winter temperatures were only slightly higher in the cool greenhouse than outdoors, allowing for possible cold acclimation in the cool greenhouse. A large cooling chamber was designed to hold up to four potted trees that were up to 2 m height. Cooling and warming cycles was computer-controlled and trunk, stem, air, and soil temperature were recorded.
| Results |
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In orchard trees in the winter, the trunk, branches and smaller stems all shrank when temperatures were below 0 °C and expanded as negative temperatures increased back up to 0 °C. Representative results are shown for 10 d in January 1998 in Fig. 1a
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With the GelistaTM chamber, progressive freezing temperatures (-2.5, -5, -7.5, -10 °C) were imposed on isolated stem segments from orchard trees in early (Fig. 2a
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The LVDT results were quite different in early (Fig. 2a
Cooling experiments with minimum temperatures of -10 °C always resulted in exotherms and stem diameter fluctuations. This was true for both the potted trees in the large cooling chamber (Fig. 3c
, d
) and for isolated stems segments from the orchard trees cooled in the GelistaTM chamber (Fig. 3a
, b
). With both experimental systems, during the winter (Fig. 3b
, d
), freezethaw cycles resulted in reversible declines in stem diameter. In contrast, during the autumn (Fig. 3a
, c
), much of the loss in diameter was irreversible, and, after the first freezethaw event, there were transient spikes in diameter associated with each exotherm and endotherm.
|
In Fig. 4
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In Fig. 5a
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| Discussion and conclusions |
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In these studies, based upon the exotherms, stem freezing occurred at temperatures between -4 °C to -8 °C. This shows that some supercooling did occur, although it was not a deep supercooling (Ashworth et al., 1993
During the summer season LVDT devices have been used to observe changes in stem diameter that related to variations in water content (Améglio and Cruiziat, 1992
; Simonneau et al., 1993
; Zweifel et al., 2000
) and it can be seen that a similar approach could be applied to observing freezethaw cycles. Consistent with results presented by Zweifel and Häsler for conifers (Zweifel and Häsler, 2000
), the wood of walnut showed only small variations (about 15% of the total stem diameter change) with the freezethaw cycle. Such results are similar to those for summer diurnal change in stem diameter, where wood contributes a maximum of 10% of the trunk diurnal shrinkage (Molz and Klepper, 1973
; Siau, 1984
; Huguet, 1985
).
However, the present results are contrary to results in Picea abies (Zweifel and Häsler, 2000
), where the changes in bark thickness occurred only when the bark was in contact with xylem. For walnut, water transport between the bark and wood was not necessary for most of the freeze-induced shrinkage to occur. Indeed, similar frost shrinkage was observed on portions of isolated bark as with intact stems. In this process, extracellular water freezes first since it has a lower solute concentration than intracellular vacuolar and cytoplasmic water. Once the temperature drops below the freezing point, the vapour deficit will be higher than that of the extracellular ice at the same temperature (Mazur, 1969
; Loris et al., 1999
). Consequently, water diffuses from the cells through the plasma membrane to the ice crystals in the extracellular matrix and, as a consequence, cell water is lost. However, the water lost by cells due to freezing in extracellular spaces should increase by about 9% in volume by changing state. Why, in these conditions, is a decrease observed rather than an increase in the thickness of the bark? The reason could be that the structure of the bark is very porous. In this case, air zones, retracting with the decrease in temperature, would fill with ice, without adding to the thickness of the bark, while the living cells shrink due to water loss. A Cryo-SEM study will have to be undertaken to understand the location of the ice further and to explain why, in the present results with walnut, a contraction of the bark was observed even when it was isolated from the rest of the stem. For mature subalpine conifers, the same contraction was observed only when the bark was in contact with the wood (Zweifel and Häsler, 2000
).
Considering the amount of stem shrinkage associated with summer drought in walnut, the amount of contraction of the bark with freezing is actually much less than might be predicted by water relations theory. A combination of water relations theory and the Clausius-Claperyron equation was employed to derive a relationship that describes the water potential of extracellular ice and supercooled water in the cell and the water potential of ice at any given freezing temperature (Rajashekar and Burke, 1982
; Rajashekar et al., 1983
):
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| (1) |
T (ice) as the water potential (MPa) of ice at temperature T (°C), which is the temperature below freezing. Thus the decline in the water potential of the ice with decreasing temperature is very large, -1.16 MPa °C-1 (Guy, 1990
Considerable evidence confirms that larger xylem vessels are more vulnerable to embolism by freezing than smaller vessels and tracheids (Hammel, 1967
; Succoff, 1969
; Ewers, 1985
; Sperry and Sullivan, 1992
; LoGullo and Salleo, 1993
; Hacke and Sauter, 1996
; Davis et al., 1999
) and the principal explanation is that larger xylem vessels produced large bubbles, for which embolism reversal is difficult (Yang and Tyree, 1992
). Nevertheless, it was shown in Fagus sylvatica L., that the likelihood of embolism formation is more dependent on the dynamics of sap freezing than xylem characteristics (Lemoine et al., 1999
). Perhaps the large gradient of water potential due to ice has often been overlooked and, if the thawing is not homogeneous in the xylem, the large gradients of water potential due to ice may increase the risk of cavitation.
When, for the same diameter stems, shrinkage due to summer water stress versus that due to winter freezing is compared, there are similar diameter fluctuations for very different water potentials. As an example, it has been observed for shoot segments with 1015 cm diameter, 200 µm diameter shrinkage for a loss in water potential of -1.0 MPa (Cochard et al., 2001
). Similar shrinkage can be seen in Fig. 2b
for a freeze event to -10 °C, which should correspond to a water potential loss of -11.6 MPa. It may be that resistance to water flow prevents equilibrium in the case of freeze events. Two hypotheses could explain this point: (1) after the initial water lost due to the ice nucleation in the extracellular space, extracellular ice stops water flow and/or (2) due to cellular plasmolysis with freeze events, resistance to water flow increases greatly.
Figure 2
supports these possible interpretations. When progressive freezing temperatures (-2.5, -5, -7.5, -10 °C) were imposed on a stem, shrinkage was observed only when the exotherm appeared, at -6 °C, for 2 cycles at -7.5 °C and 2 cycles at -10 °C. A similar maximum diameter shrinkage (about -225 µm) was observed even though there was a theoretical water potential difference of -2.9 MPa between -7.5 °C and -10 °C, based upon equation (1).
As hypothesized, reversible stem shrinkage was obtained for living tissues, but not for autoclaved tissue. In this case, swelling was observed with the freeze and this swelling could be explained by bark alone, and due to water expansion with the liquid solid phase change. Similar swelling was observed during September for isolated stem segments and in October for intact potted plants (cf. Fig. 2a
and c
). By comparison with autoclaved treatment, this result was analysed in terms of cell death due to non-acclimated trees. In this case, freezing injury to the bark, with discoloration of tissues, was observed after few cycles at the same temperature.
Given that the diameter fluctuation patterns were dramatically different for acclimated versus non-acclimated plants, and for living versus autoclaved tissues, LVDT sensors could represent a novel, non-invasive approach to the testing of cold hardiness (Améglio et al., 2001
). It presents the advantage of being sparing of plant material, allowing its use in breeding programmes, and similar results were obtained for intact plants as for isolated bark, making the technique well adapted to the field or laboratory.
| Acknowledgments |
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This study was funded by the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA, Department of Environment and Agronomy). Additional technical assistance was provided by Messrs C Bodet, P Chaleil, M Crocombette, A Leveques, M Martignac, and S Ploquin.
| Notes |
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3 To whom correspondence should be addressed. Fax: +33 4 73 62 44 54. E-mail: ameglio{at}clermont.inra.fr
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