Abstract
Agriculture will face many challenges regarding food security and sustainability. Improving phosphorus use efficiency is of paramount importance to face the needs of a growing population while decreasing the toll on the environment. Pepper (Capsicum spp.) is widely cultivated around the world; hence, any breakthrough in this field would have a major impact in agricultural systems. Herein, the response to phosphorus low-input conditions is reported for 25 pepper accessions regarding phosphorus use efficiency, biomass and root traits. Results suggest a differential response from different plant organs to phosphorus starvation. Roots presented the lowest phosphorus levels, possibly due to mobilizations towards above-ground organs. Accessions showed a wide range of variability regarding efficiency parameters, offering the possibility of selecting materials for different inputs. Accessions bol_144 and fra_DLL showed an interesting phosphorus efficiency ratio under low-input conditions, whereas mex_scm and sp_piq showed high phosphorus uptake efficiency and mex_pas and sp_bola the highest values for phosphorus use efficiency. Phosphorus low-input conditions favored root instead of aerial growth, enabling increases of root total length, proportion of root length dedicated to fine roots and root specific length while decreasing roots’ average diameter. Positive correlation was found between fine roots and phosphorus efficiency parameters, reinforcing the importance of this adaptation to biomass yield under low-input conditions. This work provides relevant first insights into pepper’s response to phosphorus low-input conditions.
Highlights
Agriculture will face many challenges in the generations, especially those related to food security and agricultural sustainability [1,2]
The considered collection belongs to the Instituto Universitario de Conservación y Mejora de la Agrodiversidad Valenciana (COMAV) Germplasm Bank (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain) and to the COMAV Capsicum breeding group, and was selected based on previous experiments, where an interesting performance and diversity for several relevant root and P uptake traits was observed [32]
There is evidence to suggest that pepper plant organs require P in different amounts, and the minimum levels are drastically different between tissues
Summary
Agriculture will face many challenges in the generations, especially those related to food security and agricultural sustainability [1,2]. Intensive agriculture has a significant impact on the environment, contributing to soil erosion, soil salinization, eutrophication and contamination of water bodies, and biodiversity reduction [3,4]. Agricultural systems need to be improved in order to cope with requirements of an increasing population as well as the impact of climate change consequences [1,5]. In both cases, one of the most critical resources involved is phosphorus (P), an inorganic mineral with a major role within the physiochemical processes of plants [6,7]. As costs of extraction increase and rock-phosphate reserves decline,
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