Extracellular ice and cell shape in frost-stressed cereal leaves: A low-temperature scanning-electron-microscopy study

Abstract

Low-temperature scanning electron microscopy was used to examine transverse fracture faces through cereal leaf pieces subjected to frost. Specimens were studied before and after sublimation of the ice. The position of extracellular ice in the leaf was inferred from the difference between the specimen before and after sublimation and from ridges and points which occurred in the extracellular ice during sublimation. Steps in the fracture surface indicated that the fracture plane passed through the extracellular ice crystals as well as through cells and also helped identify extracellular ice. The cells in controls were turgid and extracellular ice was absent. Leaf pieces from hardened rye were excised and frost-stressed to-3.3°,-21° and-72°C, cooling at 2–12°·h^-1. Cell collapse and extracellular ice were evident at-3.3°C and increased considerably by-21° C. At-21° and-72°C the leaf pieces were mainly filled with extracellular ice and there were few remaining gas spaces. The epidermal and mesophyll cells were laterally flattened, perpendicular to their attachment to adjacent cells, and phloem and vascular sheath cells were more irregularly deformed. Leaf pieces from tender barley were cooled at 2°C·min^-1 to-20° C; they were then mainly filled with extracellular ice, and the cells were highly collapsed as in the rye. In rye leaves frozen to-3.6° C before excision, ice crystals occurred in peri-vascular, sub-epidermal and intervening mesophyll spaces. In rye leaf pieces frozen to-3.3° C after excision or to-3.6° C before excision, mesophyll cells were partly collapsed even when not covered by ice, indicating that collapse of the cell wall, as well as the enclosed protoplast, was driven by dehydration. No gas or ice-filled spaces were found between wall and the enclosed protoplast. It is suggested that this can be explained without invoking chemical bonding between cell wall and plasma membrane: when the wall pores are filled by water, the pore size would reduce vapour pressure so making penetration of the wall by ice or gas less likely.