Chlorophyll, Carotenoid, and Visual Color Rating of Japanese-cedar Grown in the Southeastern United States

Abstract

<jats:p>Japanese-cedar has been underused in landscapes of the United States until recent years. There are now over 100 cultivars, many of which are grown in the southeast of the United States. Performance of cultivars has been described from U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Zone 6b to USDA Zone 7b; however, there are no reports on how cultivars perform in USDA Zone 8. The current study was conducted to measure chlorophyll <jats:italic>a</jats:italic>, chlorophyll <jats:italic>b</jats:italic>, total chlorophyll, and carotenoid content and assign visual color ratings to determine if there was a relationship between pigment values and perceived greenness, which generally is regarded as a desirable and potentially heritable trait. Total chlorophyll (<jats:italic>P</jats:italic> = 0.0051), carotenoids (<jats:italic>P</jats:italic> = 0.0266), and the ratio of total chlorophyll to carotenoids (<jats:italic>P</jats:italic> = 0.0188) exhibited a positive relationship with greenness after accounting for season and tree effects. In contrast, the ratio of chlorophyll <jats:italic>a</jats:italic> to chlorophyll <jats:italic>b</jats:italic> did not have an effect on greenness. There was a linear relationship between total chlorophyll and carotenoid regardless of season (summer <jats:italic>R</jats:italic><jats:sup>2</jats:sup> = 0.94; winter <jats:italic>R</jats:italic><jats:sup>2</jats:sup> = 0.88) when pooled across 2 years. The observed correlation between chlorophyll and carotenoid content suggests they could be used interchangeably as predictors of greenness. There were large differences in rainfall between the 2 years that may have resulted in additional variation. Furthermore, the climate in which the evaluation was conducted differs greatly from the native distribution of japanese-cedar occurring in China and Japan.</jats:p>

In vitro antioxidant potential and antimicrobial activity of some Cameroonian plant extracts

“…The differences between the major chlorophyll types (Chl b becoming higher than Chl a) can be explained by several stressed conditions induced to plants (Idhan et al, 2018). Moreover, a Chl a and Chl b decreased ratio indicates that photosystem II (PSII) reaction centers can be more influenced than light-harvesting complexes (LHC), Chl b being only in LHC, whereas Ca are part of PSII (Contreras et al, 2013). The highest contents of carotenoids were found in hexane/acetone extracts of L. camara leaves (156±0.3 mg/g), almost ten times higher than in the ethanolic extracts.…”