Large investment of stored nitrogen and phosphorus in female cones is consistent with infrequent reproduction events of Pinus koraiensis, a high value woody oil crop in Northeast Asia

Haibo Wu; Jianying Zhang; Jesús Rodríguez-Calcerrada; Roberto L Salomón; Dongsheng Yin; Peng Zhang; Hailong Shen

doi:10.3389/fpls.2022.1084043

Large investment of stored nitrogen and phosphorus in female cones is consistent with infrequent reproduction events of Pinus koraiensis, a high value woody oil crop in Northeast Asia

Front Plant Sci. 2023 Jan 12:13:1084043. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.1084043. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Haibo Wu^{1

2

3

4}, Jianying Zhang⁵, Jesús Rodríguez-Calcerrada², Roberto L Salomón², Dongsheng Yin⁵, Peng Zhang^{1

3

4}, Hailong Shen¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Tree Genetics and Breeding, School of Forestry, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China.
² Department of Natural Systems and Resources, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Ciudad Universitaria s/n, Madrid, Spain.
³ Key Laboratory of Sustainable Forest Ecosystem Management-Ministry of Education, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China.
⁴ State Forestry and Grassland Administration Engineering Technology Research Center of Korean Pine, Harbin, China.
⁵ Forestry Research Institute of Heilongjiang Province, Harbin, China.

Abstract

Pinus koraiensis is famous for its high-quality timber production all the way and is much more famous for its high value health-care nut oil production potential since 1990's, but the less understanding of its reproduction biology seriously hindered its nut productivity increase. Exploring the effects of reproduction on nutrient uptake, allocation and storage help to understand and modify reproduction patterns in masting species and high nut yield cultivar selection and breeding. Here, we compared seasonality in growth and in nitrogen ([N]) and phosphorus ([P]) concentrations in needles, branches and cones of reproductive (cone-bearing) and vegetative branches (having no cones) of P. koraiensis during a masting year. The growth of one- and two-year-old reproductive branches was significantly higher than that of vegetative branches. Needle, phloem and xylem [N] and [P] were lower in reproductive branches than in vegetative branches, although the extent and significance of the differences between branch types varied across dates. [N] and [P] in most tissues were high in spring, decreased during summer, and then recovered by the end of the growing season. Overall, [N] and [P] were highest in needles, lowest in the xylem and intermediate in the phloem. More than half of the N (73.5%) and P (51.6%) content in reproductive branches were allocated to cones. There was a positive correlation between cone number and N and P content in needles (R² = 0.64, R² = 0.73) and twigs (R² = 0.65, R² = 0.62) of two-year-old reproductive branches. High nutrient sink strength of cones and vegetative tissues of reproductive branches suggested that customized fertilization practices can help improve crop yield in Pinus koraiensis.

Keywords: Korean pine; branch growth; nutrient concentration; seasonal dynamics; strobili.

Grants and funding

This work was supported bythe National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2022YFD2201002); the Key Research and Development Program in Heilongjiang Province (Grant No. GA21B005); HW acknowledges funding from China Scholarship Council (CSC number 201906600024); and RS acknowledges funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Juan de la Cierva Programme, grant IJC2018-036123-I).