Interannual Variation of Stomatal Traits Impacts the Environmental Responses of Apple Trees

Stomata are fundamental to plant-water relations and represent promising targets to enhance crop water-use efficiency and climate resilience. Here, we investigated stomatal density (SD) variation in 269 apple accessions across 3 years (2019-2021), which demonstrated significant differences between a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Plant, cell and environment cell and environment, 2024-12
Main Authors: Zuffa, Francesca, Jung, Michaela, Yates, Steven, Quesada-Traver, Carles, Patocchi, Andrea, Studer, Bruno, Dow, Graham
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Stomata are fundamental to plant-water relations and represent promising targets to enhance crop water-use efficiency and climate resilience. Here, we investigated stomatal density (SD) variation in 269 apple accessions across 3 years (2019-2021), which demonstrated significant differences between accessions but consistency over time. We selected 2 subsets of 20 accessions, each with contrasting SD: high stomatal density (HSD; 370-500 mm ) and low stomatal density (LSD; 192-316 mm ). SD groups were compared in stomatal function, leaf physiology and crop productivity across two seasons (2021-2022). LSD had lower stomatal conductance (g ) and higher intrinsic water-use efficiency in both years (p 
ISSN:1365-3040
1365-3040
DOI:10.1111/pce.15302