Examining ozone effects on the tropical C 4 crop Sorghum bicolor

作者：Mst Nahid Farha, Flossie Brown, Lucas A. Cernusak, Stephen Sitch, Alexander W. Cheesman · 发表于：PeerJ · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.7717/peerj.18844 · 被引用次数：4 · 研究领域：Plant responses to elevated CO2、Atmospheric chemistry and aerosols、Air Quality and Health Impacts

Ozone (O 3 ), a major air pollutant, can negatively impact plant growth and yield. While O 3 impacts have been widely documented in crops such as wheat and soybean, few studies have looked at the effects of O 3 on sorghum, a C 4 plant and the fifth most important cereal crop worldwide. We exposed grain sorghum ( Sorghum bicolor cv. HAT150843) to a range of O 3 concentrations (daytime mean O 3 concentrations ranged between 20 and 97 ppb) in open-top chambers, and examined how whole plant and leaf morphological traits varied in response to O 3 exposure. Results showed no significant impact of realistic O 3 exposure on whole plant biomass and its partitioning in sorghum. These findings suggest that sorghum is generally resistant to O 3 and should be considered as a favourable crop in O 3 polluted regions, while acknowledging further research is needed to understand the mechanistic basis of O 3 tolerance in sorghum.