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Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Avila et al. (2020) -- More CO2 Reduces Drought Stress in Coffee Plants

 Avila, R.T., de Almeida, W.L.,
Costa, L.C., Machado, K.L.G.,
Barbosa, M.L., de Souza, R.P.B.,
Martino, P.B., Juáárez, M.A.T.,
Marcal, D.M.S., Martins, S.C.V.,
Ramalho, J.D.C. and DaMatta, F.M.


2020

Elevated air [CO2] improves
photosynthetic performance
and alters biomass accumulation
and partitioning in drought-stressed
coffee plants.


Environmental and Experimental Botany
177: 104137.

FULL  SUMMARY  HERE:
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V23/oct/a2.php

My Short Summary Follows:
 Avila et al. (2020) examined the effect of water stress on coffee plants under ambient (400 ppm) or elevated (700 ppm) CO2 levels, for seven months -- five months with adequate water, then half of the plants were exposed to drought stress for two months.

Elevated CO2 enhanced plant total dry matter by +32% under well-watered conditions, but by a much larger +59% under drought-stressed conditions.

Figure 1:
 

The effect of watering (well-watered or drought-stressed plants) and CO2 supply (400 or 700 ppm) on the net photosynthetic rate (left panel) and water-use efficiency (right panel) of coffee plants. Measurements were made at 50, 37.5, 25 and 20 % of field capacity for the drought-stressed plants. The percentages in red text indicate the change in photosynthesis or water use efficiency due to atmospheric CO2 for a given water treatment (i.e., well-watered or drought).

Figure 2:

Representative phenotypic appearance of shoot and roots of coffee plants exposed to different combinations of ambient or elevated CO2 and well-watered or drought-stressed conditions.