Abstract
Aims
Although arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis is common in many plants with either C3 or C4 photosynthesis, it remains poorly understood whether photosynthesis type has any significant impact on carbon (C) fluxes in mycorrhizal plants. Thus, we compared mycorrhizal and non-mycorrhizal (NM) plants belonging to Panicum bisulcatum (C3) to its congeneric P. maximum (C4).
Methods
Plants were or were not exposed to arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) fungal inoculation and/or phosphorus (P) fertilization. Plants’ C budgets were assembled based on 13CO2 pulse-chase labelling and sequential harvesting.
Results
Mycorrhizal plants allocated on average 3.9% more recently fixed C belowground than did their NM counterparts. At low P, mycorrhizal C3-Panicum plants allocated less C to aboveground respiration as compared to their respective NM controls. In contrast, mycorrhizal C4-Panicum increased the rates of photosynthesis and allocated more C to aboveground respiration than the respective NM controls. At high P, the differences were less prominent.
Conclusions
We demonstrated consistent differences in aboveground C allocation due to AM symbiosis formation in congeneric C3 and C4 grasses. Both grasses benefited from AM symbiosis in terms of improved P uptake (at least at low P). These results advocate a holistic (whole-plant) perspective in studying C fluxes in mycorrhizal plants.
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Abbreviations
- AM:
-
Arbuscular mycorrhiza
- C:
-
Carbon
- P:
-
Phosphorus
- M + :
-
Mycorrhizal treatment
- NM:
-
Non-mycorrhizal control
- low P:
-
Unamended with P
- high P:
-
Fertilized with P
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Acknowledgements
Seeds of the plants were kindly donated by Dr. Oula Ghannoum from the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University. She also provided useful hints for germinating and growing the plants. This research was supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic (project LK11224), the Czech Science Foundation (project 14-19191S), Fellowship J. E. Purkyně to JJ, and by the long-term development program of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (RVO 61388971). We are very grateful for rapid and constructive feedback by two anonymous reviewers, which substantially helped improving the quality of the presentation.
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Responsible Editor: Xinhua He.
Veronika Řezáčová and Renata Slavíková are both first authors.
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Řezáčová, V., Slavíková, R., Zemková, L. et al. Mycorrhizal symbiosis induces plant carbon reallocation differently in C3 and C4 Panicum grasses. Plant Soil 425, 441–456 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-018-3606-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-018-3606-9