IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/agiwat/v105y2012icp48-56.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Jatropha curcas seedlings show a water conservation strategy under drought conditions based on decreasing leaf growth and stomatal conductance

Author

Listed:
  • Díaz-López, L.
  • Gimeno, V.
  • Simón, I.
  • Martínez, V.
  • Rodríguez-Ortega, W.M.
  • García-Sánchez, F.

Abstract

Jatropha curcas L. has recently drawn the attention of the international research community due to its potential as a biodiesel crop. In addition, it is very well adapted to arid and semiarid climate conditions. In this research, the effects of drought on growth, leaf water relation and organic solutes, leaf and root mineral concentration, chlorophyll fluorescence parameters, leaf gas exchange and carbohydrate concentration were studied in seedlings of J. curcas to elucidate the physiological and morphological mechanisms related to their drought tolerance. Four-week-old seedlings were grown in growth chambers with five different water regimes corresponding to 100, 75, 50, 25, and 0% field capacity (FC) for four weeks. Seedlings, maintained a good water status regardless of the drought stress treatment because all water regimes affected the leaf relative water content, whereas the leaf water potential was only reduced in the water-stressed plants from the 0% and 25% FC treatments. Drought treatments reduced leaf, stem and root growth. However, the decrease in growth was higher in the aerial part of the plant than in the root, so that the root-to-shoot ratio in drought-stressed plants increased compared to that in the well-watered plants. Net assimilation of CO2(ACO2) and stomatal conductance (gs) decreased in all treatments, although ACO2 gradually declined as the water supply was decreased, while the reduction in stomatal conductance was similar in all drought stress treatments. Hence, we conclude that the strong control of transpirational water loss by reducing both stomatal conductance and biomass from aerial parts could be involved in the ability of this plant to resist drought conditions.

Suggested Citation

  • Díaz-López, L. & Gimeno, V. & Simón, I. & Martínez, V. & Rodríguez-Ortega, W.M. & García-Sánchez, F., 2012. "Jatropha curcas seedlings show a water conservation strategy under drought conditions based on decreasing leaf growth and stomatal conductance," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 48-56.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:105:y:2012:i:c:p:48-56
    DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2012.01.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377412000042
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.agwat.2012.01.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. María Dorta-Santos & Marisa Tejedor & Concepción Jiménez & Jose M. Hernández-Moreno & M. Pino Palacios-Díaz & Francisco J. Díaz, 2014. "Recycled Urban Wastewater for Irrigation of Jatropha curcas L. in Abandoned Agricultural Arid Land," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(10), pages 1-23, October.
    2. Israel Ropo Orimoloye & Leocadia Zhou & Ahmed M. Kalumba, 2021. "Drought Disaster Risk Adaptation through Ecosystem Services-Based Solutions: Way Forward for South Africa," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-15, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:105:y:2012:i:c:p:48-56. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/agwat .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.