Abstract
Unfavourable growth conditions significantly determine the yield of crop plants. Intraspecific competition is a condition in which plants compete with each other for environmental resources. An excessive density contributes to increased competition within species, which results in disruption of photosynthesis process. According to this idea, experiments were conducted to investigate the photosynthetic response of potato (Solanum tuberosum) plants to excessive congestion. Two potato varieties of different earliness classes (Vineta and Satina) were used to evaluate the efficiency of the photosynthetic apparatus based on chlorophyll (Chl) fluorescence measurements under stress conditions. Changes in Chl contents of the tested plants were also analysed. In relation to intraspecific competition, we can conclude that the Vineta variety was less sensitive to this stress factor. In contrast, the photosynthetic apparatus of the Satina variety showed less efficient functioning under these conditions. In this study, the application of Chl fluorescence was presented for the first time in order to analyse the effects of intraspecific competition in plants.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
Abbreviations
- Area:
-
area above chlorophyll fluorescence induction curve
- F0 :
-
minimal fluorescence
- Fm :
-
maximal fluorescence
- Fv :
-
variable fluorescence
- Fv/Fm :
-
maximal photochemical efficiency of PSII
- PI:
-
performance index
- tFM :
-
time to reach maximal chlorophyll fluorescence
References
Adamski J.M., Danieloski R., Deuner S. et al.: Responses to excess iron in sweet potato: impacts on growth, enzyme activities, mineral concentrations, and anatomy. — Acta Physiol. Plant. 34: 1827–1836, 2012.
Basu P.S., Sharma A., Sukumaran N.P.: Changes in net photosynthetic rate and chlorophyll fluorescence in potato leaves induced by water stress. — Photosynthetica 35: 13–19, 1998.
Blum A., Mayer J., Golan G.: The effect of grain number (sink size) on source activity and its water–relations in wheat. — J. Exp. Bot. 39: 106–114, 1988.
Germ M.: The response of two potato cultivars on combined effects of selenium and drought. — Acta. Agric. Slov. 91: 121–137, 2008.
Kalaji M.H., Jajoo A., Oukarroum A. et al.: Chlorophyll a fluorescence as a tool to monitor physiological status of plants under abiotic stress conditions. — Acta Physiol. Plant. 38: 102, 2016.
Kalaji M.H., Bosa K., Kościelniak J. et al.: Chlorophyll a fluorescence–A useful tool for the early detection of temperature stress in spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). — Integr. Biol. 15: 925–934, 2011.
Kalaji M.H., Loboda T.: Photosystem II of barley seedlings under cadmium and lead stress. — Plant Soil Environ. 53: 511–516, 2007.
Lin K.H., Hwang W.C., Lo H.F.: Chilling stress and chilling tolerance of sweet potato as sensed by chlorophyll fluorescence. — Photosynthetica 45: 628–632, 2007.
Mangla S., Sheley R.L., James J.J. et al.: Intra and interspecific competition among invasive and native species during early stages of plant growth. — Plant Ecol. 212: 531–542, 2011.
Marler T., Lawton P.: Error in interpreting field chlorophyll fluorescence. The F0 increase measurements: heat gain from solar radiation. — HortScience 29: 1172–1174, 1994.
Mathur S., Kalaji H.M., Jajoo A.: Investigation of deleterious effects of chromium phytotoxicity and photosynthesis in wheat plant. — Photosynthetica 54: 185–192, 2016.
Mathur S., Singh P., Mehta P. et al.: A comparative study to evaluate the effects of high temperature and low pH on PSII photochemistry in spinach thylakoid membranes. — Biol. Plantarum 55: 747–751, 2011.
Michałek W., Sawicka B.: Chlorophyll content and photosynthetic activity of medium-late potato cultivars in centraleast Poland field conditions. — Acta Agroph. 6: 183–195, 2005.
Netto A.T., Campostrini E., de Oliveira J.G. et al.: Photosynthetic pigments, nitrogen, chlorophyll a fluorescence and SPAD-502 readings in coffee leaves. — Sci. Hortic.- Amsterdam 104: 199–209, 2005.
Oukarroum A., El Madidi S., Schansker G. et al.: Probing the responses of barley cultivars (Hordeum vulgare L.) by chlorophyll a fluorescence OLKJIP under drought stress and re-watering. — Environ. Exp. Bot. 60: 438–446, 2007.
Pietkiewicz S.: Studying the Strategy of Dry Matter Accumulation by Potato Plants (Solanum tuberosum L.) with Application Growth Analysis. Pp. 109. Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Warsaw 2000.
Razinger J., Drinovec L., Berden-Zrimec M.: Delayed fluorescence imaging of photosynthesis inhibitor and heavy metal induced stress in potato. — Cent. Eur. J. Biol. 7: 531–541, 2012.
Schulze E-D., Beck E., Müller-Hohenstein K.: Plant Ecology. Pp. 702. Springer-Verlag, Berlin 2002.
Strasser R.J., Srivastava A., Tsimilli-Michael M.: The fluorescence transient as a tool to characterize and screen photosynthetic samples.–In: Mohanty P., Yunus M., Pathre F. (ed.): Probing Photosynthesis: Mechanisms, Regulation and Adaptation. Pp. 443–480. Taylor & Francis, London 2000.
Weigelt A., Jolliffe P.: Indices of plant competition. — J. Ecol. 91: 707–720, 2003.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Additional information
This article is published with open access at link.springer.com
Electronic supplementary material
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Olechowicz, J., Chomontowski, C., Olechowicz, P. et al. Impact of intraspecific competition on photosynthetic apparatus efficiency in potato (Solanum tuberosum) plants. Photosynthetica 56, 971–975 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11099-017-0728-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11099-017-0728-x