Effects of nutrient supply on carbon and water economies of C4 grasses
Laura Rose A B F , Robert Buitenwerf B C , Michael Cramer D , Edmund C. February D and Steven I. Higgins B E
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A University of Freiburg, Faculty of Biology, Geobotany, Schaenzlestr. 1, 79104 Freiburg, Germany.
B University of Frankfurt, Institute of Physical Geography, Altenhoeferallee 1, 60438 Frankfurt, Germany.
C Aarhus University, Ecoinformatics and Biodiversity, Department of Bioscience, Ny Munkegade 114-116, Aarhus 8000 C, Denmark.
D Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X2, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa.
E Universität Bayreuth, Lehrstuhl für Pflanzenökologie, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany.
F Corresponding author. Email: laura.rose@biologie.uni-freiburg.de
Functional Plant Biology 45(9) 935-944 https://doi.org/10.1071/FP17359
Submitted: 11 June 2017 Accepted: 7 March 2018 Published: 19 April 2018
Abstract
C3 plants can increase nutrient uptake by increasing transpiration, which promotes the flow of water with dissolved nutrients towards the roots. However, it is not clear if this mechanism of nutrient acquisition, termed ‘mass flow’, also operates in C4 plants. This is an important question, as differences in mass flow capacity may affect competitive interactions between C3 and C4 species. To test if mass flow can be induced in C4 species, we conducted an experiment in a semiarid seasonal savanna in South Africa. We grew six C4 grasses in nutrient-poor sand and supplied no nutrients, nutrients to the roots or nutrients spatially separated from the roots. We measured the rates of photosynthesis and transpiration, water-use efficiency (WUE), nitrogen gain and biomass. For all species biomass, N gain, photosynthesis and transpiration were lowest in the treatment without any nutrient additions. Responses to different nutrient positioning varied among species from no effect on N gain to a 50% reduction when nutrients were spatially separated. The ability to access spatially separated nutrients showed a nonsignificant positive relationship with both the response of transpiration and the response of WUE to spatial nutrient separation. This indicates that nutrient acquisition is not regulated by decreasing WUE in C4 grasses. Overall, our study suggests that under elevated CO2, when evaporative demand is lower, C4 species may be at a competitive disadvantage to C3 species when it comes to nutrient acquisition.
Additional keywords: carbon dioxide, mass-flow, nitrogen, nutrient uptake, stomatal conductance, water-use efficiency.
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