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Differential source–sink manipulation affects leaf carbohydrate and photosynthesis of early- and late-harvest nectarine varieties

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Abstract

Source–sink balance is a major determinant of carbon partitioning within plants. Thinning is an agronomic practice that consists of changing the ratio between leaves and fruits, the source and sink plant organs, respectively. Decreasing the fruit load on a peach tree is supposed to lead to an increase in fruit size and sometimes in soluble solid content in the remaining fruit. However, this response would change in early and late harvest peach varieties when considering the reduction in sink organs and decrease in photosynthetic process. The aim of this work was to study the effects of source–sink balance on physiological and metabolic parameters of two nectarine varieties with different fruit time development and harvest. Differential thinning was concurrently performed in trees of both varieties. Fruit development kinetics in addition to physiological parameters, such as chlorophyll fluorescence, gas-exchange, and leaf sugar composition, were determined over two harvest seasons. The decrease in photosynthetic rate in thinned trees was associated with stomata limitation and transitory sugar accumulation in leaves with sorbitol as the most abundant sugar. On the other hand, most photochemical processes remained constant in leaves of both varieties regardless of the thinning treatment. We suggest that increasing the source–sink ratio via thinning treatment leads to transient soluble sugar accumulation in the leaves and indicates an imbalance in drain capacity resulting in reduced photosynthesis and stomatal closure. In these nectarine varieties, thinning led to lower net photosynthesis but had no significant impact on final fruit size. Fruit thinning also allowed the development of other sink organs (such as vegetative suckers) and probably occurred as an acclimation process in order to maintain source–sink balance within the tree.

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Acknowledgements

We thank El Tambo nursery for giving access to their ochards to perform our experiments. This research was funded by Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico (FONDECYT, Chile) Grant No 1130197.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Biotecnología Vegetal, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Andrés Bello, República 217, 8370146, Santiago, Chile

    Diego Andrade, Maria Paz Covarrubias & Gianfranco Benedetto

  2. Instituto de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde, Campus Florestal, Universidade Federal de Viçosa, 35690-000, Florestal, Brazil

    Eduardo Gusmão Pereira

  3. Centro de Genómica y Bioinformática, Universidad Mayor, Camino La Pirámide 5750, Huechuraba, Santiago, Chile

    Andrea Miyasaka Almeida

Authors
  1. Diego Andrade
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  2. Maria Paz Covarrubias
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  3. Gianfranco Benedetto
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  4. Eduardo Gusmão Pereira
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  5. Andrea Miyasaka Almeida
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Contributions

AMA and EGP conceived the study. DA conducted most of the experiments in the field and the analysis of the results. MPC and GB conducted the experiments in the field. MPC performed the HPLC analysis. All authors were involved in the analysis and discussion of the results. DA and AMA wrote the paper. MPC and EGP revised the paper. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Andrea Miyasaka Almeida.

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Andrade, D., Covarrubias, M.P., Benedetto, G. et al. Differential source–sink manipulation affects leaf carbohydrate and photosynthesis of early- and late-harvest nectarine varieties. Theor. Exp. Plant Physiol. 31, 341–356 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40626-019-00150-0

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