2001/04/01 by Andrea Nardini, Melvin T. Tyree, Sebastiano Salleo · 219 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Chemistry · Engineering · Environmental Science · Mathematics · #Biology #Botany #Cavitation #Chemistry #Conductance #Ecology #Horticulture #Hydraulic conductivity #Hydraulics #Mathematics #Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics #Plant responses to water stress #Rosaceae #Soil water #Tree Root and Stability Studies #Xylem
paper · pdf · doi:10.1104/pp.125.4.1700
published in PLANT PHYSIOLOGY 125(4), 1700-1709 (Oxford University Press)
openalex publication_date 2001/04/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This paper reports how water stress correlates with changes in hydraulic conductivity of stems, leaf midrib, and whole leaves of Prunus laurocerasus. Water stress caused cavitation-induced dysfunction in vessels of P. laurocerasus. Cavitation was detected acoustically by counts of ultrasonic acoustic emissions and by the loss of hydraulic conductivity measured by a vacuum chamber method. Stems and midribs were approximately equally vulnerable to cavitations. Although midribs suffered a 70% loss of hydraulic conductance at leaf water potentials of -1.5 MPa, there was less than a 10% loss of hydraulic conductance in whole leaves. Cutting and sealing the midrib 20 mm from the leaf base caused only a 30% loss of conduction of the whole leaf. A high-pressure flow meter was used to measure conductance of whole leaves and as the leaf was progressively cut back from tip to base. These data were fitted to a model of hydraulic conductance of leaves that explained the above results, i.e. redundancy in hydraulic pathways whereby water can flow around embolized regions in the leaf, makes whole leaves relatively insensitive to significant changes in conductance of the midrib. The onset of cavitation events in P. laurocerasus leaves correlated with the onset of stomatal closure as found recently in studies of other species in our laboratory.