Seed Germination Characteristics and Local Adaptation of Reaumuria soongarica
Received date: 2015-12-06
Revised date: 2016-02-24
Online published: 2016-05-20
Seed germination is critical for desert plants to adapt to drought, especially for Reaumuria soongarica, a constructive shrub species in temperate desert ecosystems. However, the relationship between seed germination and local adaptation from the perspective of populations are far from clear. R. soongarica seeds were sampled from 17 geographical regions in Gansu, Ningxia or Xinjiang Provinces and stored at 4 ℃, 25 ℃, -20 ℃ or -40 ℃. Then germination were performed to fully investigated the variations on germination time, germination rate and germination energy. Moreover, correlation analyses were performed to assess the association between the world-clim data and germination rates or germination energy. The results showed that low temperature storage can weaken R. soongarica's seed dormancy and shorten the time to initial seed germination and the time for germination duration. Germination rate is not affected by storage temperature, but varies among populations of R. soongarica. Seed germination rates of different populations were significantly associated with temperature and precipitation of their original habitat. After storage at -40 ℃, R. soongarica's germination energy from all the populations significantly improved as an explosive way, suggesting that the physiological dormancy of the seeds of R. soongarica can be eliminated by the super low temperature storage. And the differentiation of germination energy among populations was significantly correlated with temperature of their original habitats. These seed germination characteristics of R. soongarica strongly suggested they adapted locally to the heterogeneity conditions of diverse ecosystems. Our study sheds light on better understanding of ecological basis of desert plants to adapt to desert environments, and provides an empirical and theoretical supports for promoting R. soongarica in the restoration engineer of desert ecosystems.
Shi Yong , Liu Yuan , Yin Hengxia , Yan Xia , Ma Xiaofei . Seed Germination Characteristics and Local Adaptation of Reaumuria soongarica[J]. Journal of Desert Research, 2016 , 36(3) : 644 -650 . DOI: 10.7522/j.issn.1000-694X.2016.00013
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