Soil erosion is a key threat to many ecosystems, especially in subtropical China where high erosion rates occur. While the mechanisms that induce soil erosion on agricultural land are well understood, soil erosion processes in forests have rarely been studied. Throughfall kinetic energy (TKE) is influenced in manifold ways and often determined by the tree's leaf and architectural traits. We inv...

Recombinant inbred lines (RIL) population (F7) of two A-genome progenitors i.e. T. monococcum and T. boeoticum were evaluated for various yield affecting parameters. For all the traits under study enlisting components of variance, genetic advance and heritability were observed to be showing highly significant differences (P ≤ 0.01). Trend of high phenotypic coefficients of variation (PCV) estim...

Karst hills, that is, jagged topography created by dissolution of limestone and other soluble rocks, are distributed extensively in tropical forest regions, including southern parts of China. They are characterized by a sharp mosaic of water and nutrient availability, from exposed hilltops with poor soil development to valleys with occasional flooding, to which trees show species-specific distr...

Functional trait plasticity is a major component of plant adjustment to environmental stresses. Here, we explore how multiple local environmental gradients in resources required by plants (light, water, and nutrients) and soil disturbance together influence the direction and amplitude of intraspecific changes in leaf and fine root traits that facilitate capture of these resources. We measured p...

This study examined how leaf and stem functional traits related to gas exchange and water balance scale with two potential proxies for tree hydraulic architecture: the leaf area:sapwood area ratio (A(L):A(S)) and wood density (rho(w)). We studied the upper crowns of individuals of 15 tropical forest tree species at two sites in Panama with contrasting moisture regimes and forest types. Transpir...

Aim Our aim was to quantify climatic influences on key leaf traits and relationships at the global scale. This knowledge provides insight into how plants have adapted to different environmental pressures, and will lead to better calibration of future vegetation–climate models. Location The data set represents vegetation from 175 sites around the world. Methods For more than 2500 vascular plant ...

Many agriculturally important traits are complex, affected by many genes and the environment. Quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping is a key tool for studying the genetic structure of complex traits in plants. In the present study QTLs associated with yield and agronomical traits such as leaf number, leaf length, leaf width, plant height, stem and head diameter were identified by using 70 recom...

Close coordination between leaf gas exchange and maximal hydraulic supply has been reported across diverse plant life forms. However, it has also been suggested that this relationship may become weak or break down completely within the angiosperms. We examined coordination between hydraulic, leaf vein, and gas-exchange traits across a diverse group of 35 evergreen Australian angiosperms, spanni...

It has been recently proposed that leaf vein length per area (VLA) is the major determinant of leaf mass per area ( MA), and would thereby determine other traits of the leaf economic spectrum (LES), such as photosynthetic rate per mass (A(mass)), nitrogen concentration per mass (N(mass)) and leaf lifespan (LL). In a previous paper we argued that this 'vein origin' hypothesis was supported only ...

1. Physical defence traits of stems and leaves should enhance biomechanical strength and survival of seedlings. For eight neotropical tree species that differ widely in lifehistory strategies, we compared stem and leaf biomechanical traits of 1 and 7-monthold seedlings grown in the shaded forest understorey and in the laboratory. 2. Material traits (biomechanical traits per unit volume, mass or...