Leaf and plant age affects photosynthetic performance and photoprotective capacity.

5 years ago

Leaf and plant age affects photosynthetic performance and photoprotective capacity.

Bielczynski, Gambin, Croce, Łącki, Hoefnagels

In this work, we studied the changes in high light tolerance and photosynthetic activity in leaves of the Arabidopsis thaliana rosette throughout the vegetative stage of growth. We implemented an image analysis workflow to analyze the capacity of both the whole plant and individual leaves to cope with excess excitation energy by following the changes in the absorbed light energy partitioning. The data show that leaf and plant age are both important factors influencing the fate of excitation energy. During the dark-to-light transition, the age of the plant affects mostly steady state levels of photochemical and non-photochemical quenching (NPQ), leading to an increased photosynthetic performance of its leaves. The age of the leaf affects the induction kinetics of NPQ. These observations were confirmed using model selection procedures. We further investigate how different leaves on a rosette acclimate to high light and show that younger leaves are less prone to photoinhibition than older leaves. Our results stress that both plant and leaf age should be taken into consideration during the quantification of photosynthetic and photoprotective traits to produce repeatable and reliable results.

Publisher URL: http://doi.org/10.1104/pp.17.00904

DOI: 10.1104/pp.17.00904