Abstract
The research presented stemmed from the observations that female plants of the annual dioecious Mercurialis annua outlive male plants. This led to the hypothesis that female plants of M. annua would be more tolerant to stress than male plants. This hypothesis was addressed in a comprehensive way, by comparing morphological, biochemical and metabolomics changes in female and male plants during their development and under salinity. There were practically no differences between the genders in vegetative development and physiological parameters. However, under salinity conditions, female plants produced significantly more new reproductive nodes. Gender-linked differences in peroxidase (POD) and glutathione transferases (GSTs) were involved in anti-oxidation, detoxification and developmental processes in M. annua. 1H NMR metabolite profiling of female and male M. annua plants showed that under salinity the activity of the TCA cycle increased. There was also an increase in betaine in both genders, which may be explainable by its osmo-compatible function under salinity. The concentration of ten metabolites changed in both genders, while ‘Female-only-response’ to salinity was detected for five metabolites. In conclusion, dimorphic responses of M. annua plant genders to stress may be attributed to female plants’ capacity to survive and complete the reproductive life cycle.
Highlights
Plants, as sessile organisms, encounter environmental conditions that play a key role in their evolutionary strategies for survival
Many of the stresses faced by living organisms involve the formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are innate to life under oxygenic atmosphere
ROS are formed by normal metabolism, but their formation is enhanced under abiotic and biotic stresses such as: drought, salinity, developmental and stress induced senescence, herbivores and pathogens [3,4,5]
Summary
As sessile organisms, encounter environmental conditions that play a key role in their evolutionary strategies for survival. Developmental dimorphic response in flowering time and longevity were shown in the annual dioecious species: Rumex hastatulus, Silene latifolia and Amaranthus cannabinus [33,35,36,37] These results pointed to the possibility that female and male plants possess different adaptabilities, which may be related to sex-specific responses under changing environments and to reproductive costs. The effect of salinity stress in perennial dioecious species was a lower number of nodes in male plants (8) than in female (11) at ‘late senescence’ (Table 1) Amaranthus cannabinus exhibited temporal gender increased number of nodes in female plants (that appears as a cluster at the top of the stem) occurred segregation, where females displayed higher plasticity in flowering time as well as a longer growth period than males.
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