Abstract
Alkalies are important agricultural contaminants complexly affecting plant metabolism. In this study, rice seedlings were subjected to alkaline stress (NaHCO3:Na2CO3 = 9:1; pH 8.9) for 30 days. The results showed that stress mightily reduced net photosynthetic rate (P N), but slightly decreased transpiration rate and stomatal conductance. This indicated that decline of P N might be a result of nonstomatal factors. Alkaline stress caused a large accumulation of Na+ in leaves up to toxic concentration, which possibly affected chloroplast ultrastructure and photosynthesis. We found that alkaline stress reduced chlorophyll fluorescence parameters, such as ratios of Fv′/Fm′, Fv/Fm, photosystem (PS) II efficiency, and electron transport rates in rice plants, i.e. it influenced the efficiencies of photon capture and electron transport by PSII. This might be a main reason for the decrease of P N under such conditions. Deficiency of minerals could be another reason for the decline of P N. Alkaline stress lowered contents of N, K, Cu, Zn, P, and Fe in rice plants. In addition, the stress strongly affected metabolism of amino acids. This might be caused by imbalance in carbon metabolism as a result of photosynthesis reduction.
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Abbreviations
- C i :
-
internal CO2 concentration
- Chl:
-
chlorophyll
- E :
-
transpiration rate
- ETR:
-
apparent rate of electron transport at the PSII level
- Fv/Fm :
-
maximum quantum yield of photosystem II
- Fv′/Fm′:
-
efficiency of excitation capture by open PSII centres
- g s :
-
stomatal conductance
- GDH:
-
glutamate dehydrogenase
- GS:
-
glutamate synthetase
- P N :
-
net photosynthetic rate
- PSII:
-
photosystem II
- ϕPSII :
-
PSII efficiency
- qN :
-
nonphotochemical quenching
- qP :
-
photochemical quenching
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Acknowledgments: This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Project (No. 31171478).
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Wu, Z.H., Yang, C.W. & Yang, M.Y. Photosynthesis, photosystem II efficiency, amino acid metabolism and ion distribution in rice (Oryza sativa L.) in response to alkaline stress. Photosynthetica 52, 157–160 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11099-014-0002-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11099-014-0002-4