Vertical patterns of photosynthesis and related leaf traits in two contrasting agricultural crops
Petra D’Odorico
A B D , Carmen Emmel A , Andrew Revill A C , Frank Liebisch A , Werner Eugster A and Nina Buchmann A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
B Present address: Department of Biology, University of Toronto Mississauga, L5 L1C6 Mississauga, Canada.
C Present address: School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, EH8 9XP Edinburgh, Scotland.
D Corresponding author. Email: petra.dodorico@usys.ethz.ch
Functional Plant Biology 46(3) 213-227 https://doi.org/10.1071/FP18061
Submitted: 16 March 2018 Accepted: 28 September 2018 Published: 30 October 2018
Abstract
To include within-canopy leaf acclimation responses to light and other resource gradients in photosynthesis modelling, it is imperative to understand the variation of leaf structural, biochemical and physiological traits from canopy top to bottom. In the present study, leaf photosynthetic traits for top and bottom canopy leaves, canopy structure and light profiles, were measured over one growing season for two contrasting crop types, winter barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) and rape seed (Brassica napus L.). With the exception of quantum yield, other traits such as maximum photosynthetic capacity (Amax), dark respiration, leaf nitrogen and chlorophyll contents, and leaf mass per area, showed consistently higher (P < 0.05) values for top leaves throughout the growing season and for both crop types. Even though Amax was higher for top leaves, the bottom half of the canopy intercepted more light and thus contributed the most to total canopy photosynthesis up until senescence set in. Incorporating this knowledge into a simple top/bottom-leaf upscaling scheme, separating top and bottom leaves, resulted in a better match between estimated and measured total canopy photosynthesis, compared with a one-leaf upscaling scheme. Moreover, aggregating to daily and weekly temporal resolutions progressively increased the linearity of the leaf photosynthetic responses to light for top leaves.
Additional keywords: canopy nitrogen, leaf area index, leaf trait, one-leaf model, photosynthesis, photosynthesis traits, top/bottom-leaf model, upscaling.
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