Are temperature effects on weight and quality of barley grains modified by resource availability?
Valeria S. Passarella A , Roxana Savin A B D and Gustavo A. Slafer A B CA Departamento de Producción Vegetal, Facultad de Agronomía, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Av. San Martín 4453 (C1417DSE), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
B Department of Crop and Forest Sciences, University of Lleida, Centre UdL-IRTA, Av. Rovira Roure 191, 25198 Lleida, Spain.
C Research Professor of ICREA (Catalonian Institution for Research and Advanced Studies, www.icrea.es).
D Corresponding author. Email: savin@pvcf.udl.es
Australian Journal of Agricultural Research 59(6) 510-516 https://doi.org/10.1071/AR06325
Submitted: 28 September 2006 Accepted: 8 February 2008 Published: 10 June 2008
Abstract
Under field conditions the occurrence of brief periods of moderately high (30–32°C) and very high temperatures (>35°C) is quite common during grain filling in small-grain cereals. These events occur under a wide range of different management and environmental conditions, such as different nitrogen supplies and source–sink ratios after flowering. The objective of the present work was to study whether the effect of a brief heat stress is modified by resource availability for the growing grains. We subjected spikes of barley 10 days after flowering to a heat treatment in factorial combination with different nitrogen availabilities and source–sink ratios during post-flowering to determine effects on grain weight and major malting quality attributes. Grain weight and screening percentage (proportion of grains <2.5 mm) were reduced by the mild heat stress. However, the magnitude of the effect was dependent on the nitrogen fertilisation and the source–sink treatments in which the heat stress was imposed. Grain protein and β-glucan percentages were increased by both nitrogen fertilisation and heat stress. Again, the magnitude of the increase was dependent upon the availability of resources. There was a trend to reduce malt extract in all treatments with respect to the control, but the reduction was only statistically significant with heat stress.
Additional keywords: high temperature, malt extract, grain protein content, beta-glucans, nitrogen availability, source–sink ratio.
Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge the support given by grants from both Fundación Antorchas and Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBACyT program). We are indebted to Antonio Aguinaga and Maltería y Cervecería Quilmes for performing the micro-malting analysis and to Beto Micheloud for field assistance. VSP held a CONICET (the National Council of Scientific Research of Argentina) scholarship during this study. RS and GAS were members of CONICET and were working at the Universidad de Buenos Aires during the experimental growing seasons and at the Universitat de Lleida during analyses of results and writing of the manuscript.
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