The influence of phylogeny and ecology on root, shoot and plant ionomes of 14 native Brazilian species

Abstract

The ionome is the elemental composition of a living organism, its tissues, cells or cell compartments. The ionomes of roots, stems and leaves of 14 native Brazilian forest species were characterised to examine the relationships between plant and organ ionomes and the phylogenetic and ecological affiliations of species. The null hypothesis that ionomes of Brazilian forest species and their organs do not differ was tested. Concentrations of mineral nutrients in roots, stems and leaves were determined for 14 Brazilian forest species, representing seven angiosperm orders, grown hydroponically in a complete nutrient solution. The 14 species could be differentiated by their ionomes and the partitioning of mineral nutrients between organs. The ionomic differences between the 14 species did not reflect their phylogenetic relationships or successional ecology. Differences between shoot ionomes and root ionomes were greater than differences in the ionome of an organ when compared among genotypes. In conclusion, differences in ionomes of species and their organs reflect a combination of ancient phylogenetic and recent environmental adaptations.

Ionomic Responses of Local Plant Species to Natural Edaphic Mineral Variations

“…* and ** represent p < 0.05 and p < 0.01, respectively. is, macroelements > microelements, which is similar to several previous studies (White et al, 2012;Watanabe et al, 2016;Stein et al, 2017;Neugebauer et al, 2020). The ANOVA and REML analysis results showed the species that dominantly contributed to variances in K, Ca, Mg, Fe, Cu, Zn, B, Ba, Sr, Cd, and Co concentrations, of which there is no significant difference among diverse soil sites in terms of Fe, Cu, Zn, Ba, and Sr concentrations (Table 1), which indicated more robust adaptation strategies to edaphic perturbations of these metallic elements than other elements, agreeing with the results of a study by White et al (2012).…”

“…Essential elements were not separated from non-essentials ones similarly that macronutrients were not departed from micronutrients at both species and family levels (Figure 6). According to HCA at the family level, minerals were clearly clustered and families were separated by ionomic profiles, which is consistent with many previous studies that distinguished plant families using their corresponding shoot or leaf ionomes (White et al, 2012;Watanabe et al, 2016;Neugebauer et al, 2020). However, PCA results did not perfectly support the conclusions, which may be due to the fact that only 50.5 and 44.7% of the total variance were explained by PC1 and PC2 in all essential and non-essential elements; hence, several separation information may be hidden by other dimensionalities.…”

“…Almost all terricolous plants depend on soil as their source of mineral nutrients and trace elements, including both essential and non-essential elements, to assemble an elemental composition in living organisms, which are defined as ionome (Salt et al, 2008). As a result of elemental accumulation, the ionome is regulated by both genetic and environmental factors (Neugebauer et al, 2020). With the development of high-throughput elemental analysis methods, such as inductively coupled plasmamass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and ICP-atomic emission spectrometry (AES), ionomic research has been significantly accelerated (Huang and Salt, 2016).…”

“…Therefore, different plant species exhibit significant differences in ionome profile in the whole plant or in organs, tissues, or cells, although they live under identical soil conditions (Broadley and White, 2012;White et al, 2012;Watanabe et al, 2015). Fundamentally, natural selection causes plant species to choose different mutational and evolutionary strategies to adapt to environmental stresses, as reflected in the differences in their genomes and gene expression (Neugebauer et al, 2020). Because of limited resources in a small soil ecological environment, there may be overlapping niches among different plant species, leading to survival mode, with coexisting competition and cooperation (Treurnicht et al, 2019).…”

Genetic dissection of the shoot and root ionomes of Brassica napus grown with contrasting phosphate supplies

“…Similarly, mean rosette Fe concentration (39 μg g-1 DW) was much lower than mean root Fe concentration (1680 μg g-1 DW) in an Arabidopsis RIL population (Ghandilyan et al, 2009b), and root Fe concentrations were greater than shoot Fe concentrations in B. oleracea genotypes, which was exacerbated by greater P supply (Pongrac et al, 2020). It was also found that Fe concentrations in the roots of many Brazilian tree species were greater than their shoot Fe concentrations when grown hydroponically in a complete nutrient solution (Neugebauer et al, 2019). It may be argued that the large amounts of Fe stored in roots are necessary to sustain the normal growth of roots, serve as a Fe reserve for periods of reduced Fe availability, or protect the shoot from Fe toxicity.…”