Effects of a water stress on the photosynthesis and respiration of wheat ears

Abstract

An experiment was conducted on Huntsman winter wheat to investigate the effects of a water stress applied at anthesis on the carbon dioxide exchange of the ears during grain filling. The water stress was created by excluding rain from the soil, not the foliage, of plants growing in the field. Control plants were well watered throughout the period when the treatment was imposed. At intervals for 32 days after anthesis, detailed measurements were made of the photosynthetic rate of ears at different irradiances and rates of ear dark respiration. The measurements were analysed by using the photosynthesis-light response model developed by Marshall and Biscoe (1980) for wheat leaves with a modification for the pathway of respiration from the grains to the glumes. The model is a non-rectangular hyperbola and uses four parameters: Pn,max (maximum rate of net photosynthesis), Rd (rate of dark respiration), ß (photochemical efficiency at low light), and F (ratio of physical to total resistance to diffusion of carbon dioxide). Analysis showed that in wheat ears during grain filling, photosynthesis can be treated as occurring predominantly in the glumes and respiration in the grains. The shape of the photosynthesis-light response curves for ears from both treatments were similar, but differed from those for wheat leaves because the maximum rates of photosynthesis were reached more gradually with increasing irradiance. However, the measured response curves were still better fitted by the model than a rectangular hyperbola which has often been used in the past. The water stress at anthesis decreased the maximum rate of ear photosynthesis by 0.8 g carbon dioxide m-2 h-1 throughout the grain-filling period. Initially, the rates of ear respiration were the same, but 32 days after anthesis the treatment had decreased ear respiration rate from 0.04 to 0.01 g carbon dioxide h-1/grain.