Plant Diversity ›› 2013, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (1): 55-61.DOI: 10.7677/ynzwyj201312042

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Effects of Clonal Integration on Growth of Centella asiatica Suffering from Heterogeneous Saline Stress

 LIAO  Yong-Mei-1, LIU  Fu-Jun-1 , CHEN  Jin-Song-2   

  1. 1 College of Life Science, China West Normal University, Nanchong 637009, China; 2 Chengdu Institute
    of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610041, China
  • Received:2012-03-30 Online:2013-01-25 Published:2012-09-20

Abstract:

We conducted a pot experiment to study the effects of clonal integration on growth of Centella asiatica suffering from heterogeneous saline stress. Distal ramets (younger ramets) of C.asiatica were subjected to high saline or normal soil, and their connections to the proximal ramets (older ramets) were either severed or not. The results demonstrated that, clonal integration was beneficial to the growth of distal ramets and the whole clonal fragments, in terms of leaf area and biomass, and the root to shoot ratio of stolen connection is significantly lower than control. Clonal integration also significantly increased the chlorophyll content and photochemical efficiency of the stressed distal ramets. But, when suffering from saline stress, it has no significant difference between stolon connection and stolon severed distal ramets on net photosynthetic rate. Connecting to the stressed distal ramets brought little cost to the proximal ramets, and never incur the increase of photosynthetic efficiency of proximal ramets. In a word, clonal integration improved the growth of the whole clonal fragments in heterogeneous saline stress, it is important for developing the adaptive strategy of clonal plants in heterogeneous environment.

Key words:  Centella asiatica, Clonal integration, Saline stress, Net photosynthetic rate

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