With irrigation, plant hydraulic conductance (K(L)), midday psi(x) and total biomass were all greater in clones 109A and 120 than in the other clones. Root mass to leaf area ratio was larger in clone 109A than in the others, whereas rooting depth was greater in drought-tolerant than in drought-sensitive clones. Predawn psi(x) of -3.0 MPa was reached fastest by 109A, followed progressively by clones 46, 120 and 14. Decreases in g(s) with declining psi(x), or increasing evaporative demand, were similar for clones 14, 46, and 120, but lower in 109A. Carbon isotope ratio increased under drought; however, it was lower in 109A than in other clones. For all clones, psi(x), g(s) and K(L) recovered rapidly following re-watering. Differences in root depth, K(L) and stomatal control of water use, but not osmotic or elastic adjustments, largely explained the differences in relative tolerance to drought stress of clones 14 and 120 compared with clones 46 and 109A.

No abstract

No abstract

Coffea canephora plants (clone INCAPER-99) were submitted to low N (LN) or high N (HN) applications and two watering regimes (daily irrigation and irrigation every 5 days for a month). Although water potential was not altered significantly by N, HN plants showed higher relative water content than did LN plants under water deficit. Only HN plants exhibited some ability for osmotic adjustment. Plants from both N treatments increased their cell wall rigidity under drought, with a more pronounced augmentation in HN plants. In wellwatered plants, carbon assimilation rate increased with increasing N while stomatal conductance did not respond to N supply. Under drought conditions, carbon assimilation decreased by 68-80% compared to wellwatered plants, whereas stomatal conductance and transpiration rate declined by 35% irrespective of the N applications. Stable carbon isotope analysis, combined with leaf gas exchange measurements, indicated that regardless of the watering treatments, N increased the longterm water use efficiency through changes in carbon assimilation with little or no effect on stomatal behaviour.

Coffee (Coffea arabica L.) plants were grown in small (3-L), medium (10-L) and large (24-L) pots for 115 or 165 d after transplanting (DAT), which allowed different degrees of root restriction. Effects of altered source : sink ratio were evaluated in order to explore possible stomatal and non-stomatal mechanisms of photosynthetic down-regulation. Increasing root restriction brought about large and general reductions in plant growth associated with a rising root : shoot ratio. Treatments did not affect leaf water potential or leaf nutrient status, with the exception of N content, which dropped significantly with increasing root restriction even though an adequate N supply was available. Photosynthesis was severely reduced when plants were grown in small pots; this was largely associated with non-stomatal factors, such as decreased Rubisco activity. At 165 DAT contents of hexose, sucrose, and amino acids decreased in plants grown in smaller pots, while those of starch and hexose-P increased in plants grown in smaller pots. Photosynthetic rates were negatively correlated with the ratio of hexose to free amino acids, but not with hexose content. Activities of acid invertase, sucrose synthase, sucrose-P synthase, fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase, ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase, starch phosphorylase, glyceraldehyde-3-P dehydrogenase, PPi : fructose-6-P 1-phosphotransferase and NADP : glyceraldehyde-3-P dehydrogenase all decreased with severe root restriction. Glycerate-3-P : Pi and glucose-6-P : fructose-6-P ratios decreased accordingly. Photosynthetic downregulation was unlikely to have been associated directly with an end-product limitation, but rather with decreases in Rubisco. Such a down-regulation was largely a result of N deficiency caused by growing coffee plants in small pots.

This study proposed the use of the stable isotope technique to track the type of food utilized by pacu Piaractus mesopotamicus larvae during their development, and to identify the moment when the larvae start using nutrients from the dry diet by retaining its carbon and nitrogen atoms in their body tissues. Five-day-old pacu larvae at the onset of exogenous feeding were fed Artemia nauplii or formulated diet exclusively; nauplii1formulated diet during the entire period; or were weaned from nauplii to a dry diet after 3, 6 or 12 days after the ¢rst feeding. d 13 C and d 15 N values for Artemia nauplii were À15.1% and 4.7%, respectively, and À 25.0% and 7.4% for the dry diet. The initial isotopic composition of the larval tissue was À 20.2% and 9.5% for d 13 C and d 15 N respectively. Later, at the end of a 42-day feeding period, larvae fed Artemia nauplii alone reached values of À 12.7% and 7.0% for d 13 C and d 15 N respectively. Larvae that received the formulated diet alone showed values of À 22.7% for d 13 C and 9.6% for d 15 N. The stable isotope technique was precise, and the time at which the larvae utilized Artemia nauplii, and later dry diet as a food source could be clearly de-¢ned.Keywords: pacu Piaractus mesopotamicus (Holmberg 1887), live food, dry diet, larval feeding, stable carbon (d 13 C) isotope, stable nitrogen (d 15 N) isotope

*Autor correspondente RESUMO: A diferença entre fontes alimentares da ordem de 14‰, originárias de plantas com ciclos fotossintéticos Carbono-3 (C3) e Carbono-4 (C4) e seus subprodutos, abre novas perspectivas para o estudo do metabolismo do carbono em aves e animais de pequeno porte. Os autores propõem um modelo teórico e experimental capaz de exprimir os resultados de enriquecimento relativo, delta per mil (δ‰) da razão 13 C/ 12 C versus tempo em diferentes tecidos. Utilizou-se a equação y(t) = (y0 -q/k) e -kt + q/k onde, y(t) é a concentração isotópica no tempo desejado, y0 a concentração isotópica inicial existente no tecido, k é uma constante de troca isotópica com unidade 1/tempo, t é unidade de tempo e q é a taxa de entrada de metabólitos que contém carbono, com valores de δ‰/tempo. Para fígado de galinhas que tiveram a ração de ciclo fotossintético C4 substituída por dieta C3 obteve-se a equação δ 13 C = -24,74‰ + 12,37‰ e -0.237(nT) , com meia-vida (T) de 2,9 dias. O patamar de equilíbrio de substituição do carbono foi alcançado em -24,48‰, de modo que praticamente 98,4% do conteúdo isotópico do C4 no fígado foi substituído por C3 após 5,6 meias-vidas. O modelo foi adequado para determinar o tempo de reciclagem total ou parcial da concentração de carbono nos tecidos em estudo. Palavras-chave: aves de postura, C3, metabolismo nutricional, δ 13 C, modelo teórico-experimental THEORICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL MODEL FOR CARBON-13 TURNOVER IN MAMMALIAN AND AVIAN TISSUESABSTRACT: Food source differences of about 14‰ from plants with carbon-3 (C3) and carbon-4 (C4) photosynthetic cycles and their derived products make carbon metabolism studies possible in birds and small mammals. The authors suggest a theorical and experimental model for determining the relative enrichment results, delta per thousand (δ‰) of the 13 C/ 12 C ratio as a function of time for different tissues. The following equation was used: y(t) = (y0 -q/k) e -kt + q/k where, y(t) is the isotopic concentration at time t, y0 is the initial isotopic concentration in the tissue, k is the turnover constant expressed in 1/time, and q is the input of metabolites which contain carbon expressed in δ‰/time. The equation below was obtained from the analysis of hen livers, the carbon-4 photosynthetic cycle ration of which was switched to a carbon-3 diet: δ 13 C = -24.74‰ + 12.37‰ e -0.237(nT) with 2.9 day half-life. The carbon switching steady-state was reached at -24.48‰ so that nearly 98.4% of the C4 isotopic content in the liver was replaced by C3 after 5.6 half-lives. The proposed model is suitable to determine the partial or entire turnover of carbon concentration in some selected tissues. Key words: hens, C3, nutritional metabolism, δ 13 C, theorical experimental modeling INTRODUÇÃOAs plantas dos ciclos fotossintéticos C3 e C4 e seus derivados, ou os seus subprodutos, apresentam valores isotópicos distintos. A diferença isotópica entre elas, da ordem de 14‰, permite realizar experimentos biológicos com alimentação utilizando-se a técn...

Bovine meat and bone meal (MBM) was widely used in animal diets until outbreaks of Bovine Spongiform Encefalopathy (BSE) occurred in some countries. It has not been confirmed yet whether or not BSE may be transmitted to man through chicken meat originated from poultry that had been fed diets containing MBM. Therefore, consumers nowadays express preference for meat originated from birds fed exclusively vegetable diets. This study analyzed samples of major breast muscle (Pectoralis major) using mass spectrometry of stable isotopes (carbon and nitrogen) as a means to assess the presence of MBM in broiler diets, a technique that might be used in the certification of poultry quality. A total of 150 day-old chicks were reared in five randomized treatments with increasing MBM dietary inclusion levels (0, 1, 2, 4 and 8%). On day 42, breast muscle samples were collected from three birds per treatment and used in the determination of