Abstract
The reproductive characteristics of plants are likely affected by climate change e.g., changes in precipitation patterns and nitrogen deposition, but few studies have examined the effects of these ecological agents of selection on the seed yield and germination characteristics of perennial grasses. Here, we conducted a multiple-year pot experiment with Leymus chinensis, a common perennial grass in the eastern region of the Eurasian steppe zone, which was grown under three water treatments with and without nitrogen addition. The seed yield of L. chinensis increased with precipitation and was highest (7.0 g/pot) under 747 mm of precipitation with nitrogen addition (10.5 g/m2). Seed yield was positively correlated with heading number, tiller number, and grain number per spike, and the heading number was a critical factor affecting seed yield. Seed germination percentage and the time to obtain 50% germination were affected by environmental cues experienced by the mother plants.
Highlights
Grasslands are among the most widely distributed terrestrial biomes globally, covering ca. 52.54 million km2 of the terrestrial surface (Zhao et al, 2020)
Under the same precipitation treatment, the seed setting rate and thousand seed weight of L. chinensis were higher under N0 than N1 (Figures 1C,D)
The seed yield per pot of L. chinensis was significantly affected by water, N, and the water × N interaction (F 129.712, p < 0.001; F 10.844, p < 0.01; F 6.588, p < 0.05; Table 1)
Summary
Grasslands are among the most widely distributed terrestrial biomes globally, covering ca. 52.54 million km of the terrestrial surface (Zhao et al, 2020). Grasslands play an important role in regional climates, biodiversity, conservation, the provision of ecosystem services, and socio-economic development (Zhao et al, 2015; Han et al, 2018; Nerlekar and Veldman, 2020). Grasslands have become seriously degraded because of climate change and human activities (Andrade et al, 2015; Shen et al, 2016; Wick et al, 2016; Zhou et al, 2020). Given that the atmospheric deposition of biologically active nitrogen (N) has increased dramatically over the past few decades and precipitation patterns have changed, there has been increased research interest in examining the effects of N deposition and precipitation on the growth and reproduction of grass (Duan et al, 2019; Zhao et al, 2019). The addition of N has been shown to increase the height, population density, N concentration in tissues, photosynthetic rate, and wateruse efficiency of plants (Pan et al, 2005; Ren et al, 2014). Ochoa-Hueso et al (2014) suggested that
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