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Drought alters the carbon footprint of trees in soils-tracking the spatio-temporal fate of ¹³ C-labelled assimilates in the soil of an old-growth pine forest.

ABSTRACT: Above and belowground compartments in ecosystems are closely coupled on daily to annual timescales. In mature forests, this interlinkage and how it is impacted by drought is still poorly understood. Here, we pulse-labelled 100-year-old trees with ¹³ CO₂ within a 15-year-long irrigation experiment in a naturally dry pine forest to quantify how drought regime affects the transfer and use of assimilates from trees to the rhizosphere and associated microbial communities. It took 4 days until new ¹³ C-labelled assimilates were allocated to the rhizosphere. One year later, the ¹³ C signal of the 3-h long pulse labelling was still detectable in stem and soil respiration, which provides evidence that parts of the assimilates are stored in trees before they are used for metabolic processes in the rhizosphere. Irrigation removing the natural water stress reduced the mean C residence time from canopy uptake until soil respiration from 89 to 40 days. Moreover, irrigation increased the amount of assimilates transferred to and respired in the soil within the first 10 days by 370%. A small precipitation event rewetting surface soils altered this pattern rapidly and reduced the effect size to +35%. Microbial biomass incorporated 46 ± 5% and 31 ± 7% of the C used in the rhizosphere in the dry control and irrigation treatment respectively. Mapping the spatial distribution of soil-respired ¹³ CO₂ around the 10 pulse-labelled trees showed that tree rhizospheres extended laterally 2.8 times beyond tree canopies, implying that there is a strong overlap of the rhizosphere among adjacent trees. Irrigation increased the rhizosphere area by 60%, which gives evidence of a long-term acclimation of trees and their rhizosphere to the drought regime. The moisture-sensitive transfer and use of C in the rhizosphere has consequences for C allocation within trees, soil microbial communities and soil carbon storage.

SUBMITTER: Gao D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8251913 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BackgroundStable isotopically labelled organisms have found wide application in life science research including plant physiology, plant stress and defense as well as metabolism related sciences. Therefore, the reproducible production of plant material enriched with stable isotopes such as 13C and 15N is of considerable interest. A high degree of enrichment (> 96 atom %) with a uniformly distributed isotope (global labelling) is accomplished by a continuous substrate supply during plant growth/cultivation. In the case of plants, 13C-labelling can be achieved by growth in 13CO2(g) atmosphere while global 15N-labelling needs 15N- containing salts in the watering/nutrient solution. Here, we present a method for the preparation of 13C and 15N-labelled plants by the use of closed growth chambers and hydroponic nutrient supply. The method is exemplified with durum wheat.ResultsIn total, 330 g of globally 13C- and 295 g of 15N-labelled Triticum durum wheat was produced during 87 cultivation days. For this, a total of 3.88 mol of 13CO2(g) and 58 mmol of 15N were consumed. The degree of enrichment was determined by LC-HRMS and ranged between 96 and 98 atom % for 13C and 95-99 atom % for 15N, respectively. Additionally, the isotopically labelled plant extracts were successfully used for metabolome-wide internal standardisation of native T.durum plants. Application of an isotope-assisted LC-HRMS workflow enabled the detection of 652 truly wheat-derived metabolites out of which 143 contain N.ConclusionA reproducible cultivation which makes use of climate chambers and hydroponics was successfully adapted to produce highly enriched, uniformly 13C- and 15N-labelled wheat. The obtained plant material is suitable to be used in all kinds of isotope-assisted research. The described technical equipment and protocol can easily be applied to other plants to produce 13C-enriched biological samples when the necessary specific adaptations e.g. temperature and light regime, as well as nutrient supply are considered. Additionally, the 15N-labelling method can also be carried out under regular glasshouse conditions without the need for customised atmosphere.

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Drought alters the carbon footprint of trees in soils-tracking the spatio-temporal fate of ¹³ C-labelled assimilates in the soil of an old-growth pine forest.

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OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

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Dataset Information

Drought alters the carbon footprint of trees in soils-tracking the spatio-temporal fate of 13 C-labelled assimilates in the soil of an old-growth pine forest.

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OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

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Drought alters the carbon footprint of trees in soils-tracking the spatio-temporal fate of ¹³ C-labelled assimilates in the soil of an old-growth pine forest.