Open Access

ARTICLE

Soil Moisture Rather than Soil Nutrient Regulates the Belowground Bud Bank of Rhizomatous Species Psammochloa villosa in Arid Sand Dunes

by Yawei Dong¹, Ziyue Guo¹, Qun Ma², Zhiming Xin³, Jin Tao¹, Jiatai Tian¹, Jinlei Zhu⁴, Zhiming Zhang^1,*, Jianqiang Qian^1,*

1 College of Forestry, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, 450002, China
2 Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110164, China
3 Experimental Center of Desert Forestry, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Inner Mongolia Dengkou Desert Ecosystem National Observation Research Station, Dengkou, 015200, China
4 Institute of Landscape and Plant Ecology, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, 70599, Germany

* Corresponding Authors: Zhiming Zhang. Email: ; Jianqiang Qian. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Plant–Environment Interactions)

Phyton-International Journal of Experimental Botany 2023, 92(5), 1301-1309. https://doi.org/10.32604/phyton.2023.027043

Received 10 October 2022; Accepted 18 November 2022; Issue published 09 March 2023

Abstract

In arid and semi-arid sand dune ecosystems, belowground bud bank plays an important role in population regeneration and vegetation restoration. However, the responses of belowground bud bank size and composition to sand burial and its induced changes in soil environmental factors have been rarely studied. In arid sand dunes of Northwestern China, we investigated belowground bud bank size and composition of the typical rhizomatous psammophyte Psammochloa villosa as well as three key soil environmental factors (soil moisture, total carbon and total nitrogen) under different depths of sand burial. Total buds and rhizome buds increased significantly with increasing burial depth, whereas tiller buds first increased and then decreased, with a peak value at the depth of 20–30 cm. Soil moisture increased significantly with sand burial depth, and was positively correlated with the number of all buds and rhizome buds. Soil total carbon concentration first increased and then decreased with sand burial depth, and total nitrogen concentration was significantly lower under deep sand burial than those at shallow depths, and only the number of tiller buds was positively correlated with soil total nitrogen concentration. These results indicate that soil moisture rather than soil nutrient might regulate the belowground bud bank of P. villosa, and that clonal psammophytes could regulate their belowground bud bank in response to sand burial and the most important environmental stress (i.e., soil moisture). These responses, as the key adaptive strategy, may ensure clonal plant population regeneration and vegetation restoration in arid sand dunes.

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Keywords

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