Ontogenetic shifts in leaf biomass allocation in crop plants

作者：Renfei Chen, Suping Xiao, Chuancong Dong, Shubin Xie, Liang Zhang, Fan Wu, Chengyi Tu, Quan‐Xing Liu, Shaopeng Wang, Ülo Niinemets, Alan Hastings, Karl J. Niklas, Jianming Deng · 发表于：National Science Review · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1093/nsr/nwae349 · 被引用次数：6 · 研究领域：Bioenergy crop production and management、Crop Yield and Soil Fertility、Sustainability and Ecological Systems Analysis

Leaves are the primary photosynthetic organ of vascular land plants as they provide photosynthates that maintain plant growth and reproduction. The extent to which plants allocate biomass to their leaf construction strongly influences photosynthetic performance, net primary productivity [1] and thus ecosystem functions [2]. Consequently, biomass allocation patterns have been a central focus in ecology. As a simple metric of plant biomass allocation patterns, the leaf mass ratio (i.e. the quotient of leaf biomass and total plant biomass) typically (but not invariably) decreases over time during ontogeny [3,4]. However, contrasting patterns have been reported [5] based on direct measurements at different ontogenetic stages or using different proxies of ontogeny, such as total plant biomass and plant height. Classic optimal allocation theory cannot provide reasonable explanations for these contrasting empirical observations, whereas transient biomass allocation pattern theory can [6,7]. This new theoretical framework pays attention to biomass allocation patterns over relatively short time scales rather than asymptotic behavior over long time scales [6,7]. The importance of investigating transient plant biomass allocation patterns emerges from the fact that observations over different time scales reveal statistically significant differences among various plant systems, thereby leading to conflicting theories and unnecessary debate. For example, the time scales of forest trees dif...