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Species-specific nitrogen resorption proficiency in legumes and nonlegumes

  • Regular Paper – Ecology/Ecophysiology/Environmental Biology
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Abstract

Nitrogen (N) resorption from senescing leaves enables plants to reuse N, thereby making them less dependent on current N uptake from the environment. Therefore, N resorption is important for survival and fitness, particularly for plants growing under low N supply. We studied N resorption from senescing leaves of 25 legumes and 25 nonlegumes in a temperate region of Japan to test the hypothesis that high N resorption has not evolved in legumes that fix atmospheric N2. The extent of N resorption was quantified by N resorption proficiency that is measured as the level to which leaf N concentration was reduced during senescence, i.e., the lower the senesced leaf N concentration, the lower the N loss through leaf fall and higher the N resorption proficiency. In support of the hypothesis, senesced leaf N concentration was higher in legumes than in nonlegumes, but there was considerable overlap between the groups. The higher senesced leaf N concentration of legumes was associated with a lower proportion of leaf N resorbed during senescence, particularly in species with higher leaf N concentrations. According to a hierarchical partitioning analysis, there was a large contribution of species to the total variance in the senesced leaf N concentration as opposed to a minor contribution of functional group (legume/nonlegume). This study reveals that legumes are not proficient at resorbing N from senescing leaves but that N2-fixation might not be the single most important determinant of N resorption.

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Notes

  1. Recently, a new subfamilial classification of Fabaceae was proposed (Azani et al. 2017), but in this study, we adopt the traditional classification system in which the information on difference in nodulation status among subfamilies is well organized.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Yasuo Yamamura, Yasuhiko Endo, Kouki Hikosaka and four anonymous reviewers for comments. Thanks are also extended to Keisuke Toyama, Masayuki Negami and other staff members of The University of Tokyo, Chiba Forest. Ogawa branch of Hitachi-Omiya City Office supported the fieldwork.

Funding

Support for this work was provided by Nippon Life Insurance Foundation and JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 17K07554 to SO.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Ibaraki University, Mito, 310-0056, Japan

    Shimpei Oikawa, Yusuke Matsui, Ryo Tanabe, Tomoki Tanaka & Ayaka Togashi

  2. Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, 1 Matsunosato, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8687, Japan

    Michio Oguro

  3. Graduate School of Science, Misaki Marine Biological Station, The University of Tokyo, 1024 Koajiro, Misaki, Miura, Kanagawa, 238-0225, Japan

    Masanori Okanishi

  4. Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai, 980-8578, Japan

    Tomoyuki Itagaki

Authors
  1. Shimpei Oikawa
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  2. Yusuke Matsui
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  3. Michio Oguro
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  4. Masanori Okanishi
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  5. Ryo Tanabe
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  6. Tomoki Tanaka
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  8. Tomoyuki Itagaki
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Contributions

SO designed the research. SO, YM, RT, TT, and AT conducted field works. Laboratory works was carried out by SO, YM, RT and TT. SO, MOG, MOK and TI analyzed the data and drafted the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Shimpei Oikawa.

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Oikawa, S., Matsui, Y., Oguro, M. et al. Species-specific nitrogen resorption proficiency in legumes and nonlegumes. J Plant Res 133, 639–648 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10265-020-01211-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10265-020-01211-1

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