Transgenerational Effects of Maternal Water Condition on the Growth, C:N Stoichiometry and Seed Characteristics of the Desert Annual Atriplex aucheri.

Li Jiang,Zhibin Wen,Lei Wang,Yunling Zhang,Changyan Tian,Mohsin Tanveer,Zhenyong Zhao

doi:10.3390/plants10112362

Abstract

Water conditions directly affect plant growth and thus modify reproduction allocation. However, little is known about the transgenerational effects of water conditions on xerophytes. The desert annual Atriplex aucheri produces three types of seeds (A: dormant, ebracteate black seeds; B: dormant, bracteolate black seeds; C: non-dormant, bracteolate brown seeds) on a single plant. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of low/high water treatment (thereafter progeny water treatment) on aboveground biomass, C:N stoichiometry, and offspring seed characteristics of A. aucheri grown from brown seeds whose mother plants were under low/high water treatment (thereafter maternal water treatment). Progeny water only affected shoot dry weight and seed allocation of type A. Under low progeny water treatment, plants from parents with low maternal water treatment had the lowest biomass. Maternal water did not significantly influence the C and N content, however high maternal water increased the C:N ratio. Maternal water treatment did not significantly affect seed number. However, plants under low maternal and progeny water treatments had the lowest weight for type B seeds. When progeny plants were under low water treatment, seed allocation of type A, type B, and total seed allocation of plants under high maternal water were significantly lower than those of plants under low maternal water. These results indicate that water conditions during the maternal generation can dramatically contribute to progeny seed variation, but the transgenerational effects depend on the water conditions of progeny plants.

Highlights

Transgenerational effects occur when biotic or abiotic environmental factors act on maternal plants and thereby influence the phenotype of progeny plants
When maternal plants were subjected to high water treatment, the shoot dry weight of progeny plants experiencing maternal water environment significantly increased relative to those of progeny plants experiencing low water treatment
Shoot dry weight of progeny plants experiencing low maternal water environment treated with low water had the lowest weight

Summary

Introduction

Transgenerational effects occur when biotic or abiotic environmental factors act on maternal plants and thereby influence the phenotype of progeny plants. Transmitted factors can be divided into abiotic factors and biotic factors. Biotic factors that have transgenerational effects include competition, herbivory, symbiotic microorganisms, etc. When growing in competition, the progeny of parental competition plants of Polygonum persicaria produce great shoot mass and allocate more biomass to the stem than the progeny of parents grown without competition [9]. Most prior studies of the transgenerational effects have tested the effects on progeny growth and seed characteristics of plants that produced only one seed type [10,11,12,13]. Some evidence indicates that these transgenerational effects might be caused by molecular epigenetic mechanisms [15]

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