Comprehensive resistance evaluation of 15 blueberry cultivars under high soil pH stress based on growth phenotype and physiological traits

Abstract

High soil pH is one of the main abiotic factors that negatively affects blueberry growth and cultivation. However, no comprehensive evaluation of the high soil pH tolerance of different blueberry cultivars has been conducted. Herein, 16 phenotypic and physiological indices of 15 blueberry cultivars were measured through pot experiments, and the high-pH soil tolerance coefficient (HSTC) was calculated based on these indices to comprehensively evaluate the high-soil-pH tolerance of plants. The results demonstrated that high soil pH stress inhibited blueberry 77.growth, and MDA, soluble sugar (SS), and soluble protein (SP) levels increased in leaves. Moreover, in all cultivars, CAT activity in the antioxidant system was enhanced, whereas SOD activity was reduced, and the relative expression levels of the antioxidant enzyme genes SOD and CAT showed similar changes. In addition, the leaf chlorophyll relative content (SPAD), net photosynthetic rate (Pn), transpiration rate (E), and stomatal conductance (Gs) decreased, while changes in the intercellular CO2 concentration (Ci) were noted in different cultivars. Finally, according to the comprehensive evaluation value D obtained from the combination of principal component analysis (PCA) and membership function (MF), the 15 blueberry cultivars can be divided into 4 categories: high soil pH-tolerant type [‘Briteblue’ (highest D value 0.815)], intermediate tolerance type (‘Zhaixuan 9’, ‘Zhaixuan 7’, ‘Emerald’, ‘Primadonna’, ‘Powderblue’ and ‘Chandler’), low high soil pH-tolerant type (‘Brightwell’, ‘Gardenblue’, ‘Plolific’ and ‘Sharpblue’) and high soil pH-sensitive type [‘Legacy’, ‘Bluegold’, ‘Baldwin’ and ‘Anna’ (lowest D value 0.166)]. Stepwise linear regression analysis revealed that plant height, SS, E, leaf length, Ci, SOD, and SPAD could be used to predict and evaluate the high soil pH tolerance of blueberry cultivars.

Rapidly mining candidate cotton drought resistance genes based on key indicators of drought resistance

“…Based on the drought resistance identification of large populations, complex phenotypes increase the difficulty of investigations, and it is very important to focus on key phenotypes. In bilberry plants [ 27 ], based on statistical methods such as principal component analysis (PCA) and stepwise linear regression, 16 phenotypic and physiological indicators related to pH resistance were attributed to 7 indicators, including plant height, SOD activity and SPAD. In wheat, 12 physiological and biochemical indicators, including stomatal conductance, proline and malondialdehyde, were found to be associated with drought resistance via the use of multivariate statistical methods.…”

Transcriptomic and Metabolomic Profiling Reveals the Variations in Carbohydrate Metabolism between Two Blueberry Cultivars

“…For qRT-PCR amplification, a GS AntiQ qPCR SYBR Fast Mix (Genesand Biotech Co., Ltd., Beijing, China) and a QuantStudioTM 3 System real-time system were employed. The following were the reaction conditions: 95 °C for 10 s, 60 °C for 30 s, for a total of 45 cycles; 95 °C for 15 s; 60 °C for 1 min; and 95 °C for 15 s. The GAPDH gene was chosen as the reference gene [ 73 ], and the 2 −ΔΔCt value method was used to calculate the relative expression of the related genes. The relevant primers used in this study are shown in Table S5 .…”

Dynamic variation of non-structural carbohydrates in branches and leaves of temperate broad-leaved tree species over a complete life history

“…On the other hand, it is possible that plants need to absorb large amounts of N from the soil during their growing season, and this leads to higher carbon input for their 10.3389/ffgc.2023.1130604 morphogenesis (Eissenstat and Yanai, 1997;Wang et al, 2017). Soil pH affects the photosynthetic and osmoregulatory systems of plants (Yang et al, 2022), so it is significantly correlated with leaf and branch NSC components (Table 2).…”