The Relationship of Carbohydrates to Cold Acclimation of Hedera helix L. cv. Thorndale

Abstract

AbstractWhile both the total sugar content and cold hardiness greatly increased during artificial cold acclimation, no direct parallelism was demonstrated. In fact, plants hardened in the dark exhibited an increase in hardiness during the period when the total sugar content declined, furthermore, while there was evidence for an accumulation of sugars (especially sucrose) incorporation of 14C indicated that all of the isolated fractions were in a dynamic state.Dehardening, paralleled by a large increase in the starch content, was more rapid in the light than in the dark. Furthermore, in stems the sugar content increased after 3 days of dehardening but declined after 7 days. This increase may represent the release of sugars from a previously unextractable form such as a glycoprotein complex.Starvation experiments indicate that photosynthates produced during the cold acclimation period are preferentially used during cold acclimation rather than reserve carbohydrates. This was also indicated by the smaller amount of starch hydrolysis in plants hardened in the light. Thus, while there appears to be a role for carbohydrates in the cold acclimation process, the lack of parallelism between sugar content and hardiness may be interpreted as indicating 1) cold acclimation is not merely an accumulation of sugars or an osmotic effect per se, and 2) under normal conditions, the level of carbohydrates is not limiting the rate or degree of cold acclimation.