Responses of Rice Growth to Day and Night Temperature and Relative Air Humidity-Dry Matter, Leaf Area, and Partitioning

• Published in: Plants (Basel) Vol. 8; no. 11; p. 521
• Main Authors: Stuerz, Sabine, Asch, Folkard
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 18.11.2019; MDPI
• Subjects: Air temperature; Asymmetry; Biomass; Climate change; Dry matter; Environmental conditions; growth chamber; Growth rate; Humidity; Leaf area; leaf mass fraction; Leaves; Night; Organs; oryza sativa; Partitioning; Plant growth; Relative humidity; Rice; root mass fraction; specific leaf area; stem mass fraction; Temperature effects; specific leaf area; Oryza sativa; root mass fraction; growth chamber; leaf mass fraction; stem mass fraction
• ISSN: 2223-7747; 2223-7747
• DOI: 10.3390/plants8110521

Asymmetric changes of day and night temperature have already been observed because of Climate Change. However, knowledge on environmental conditions either during day or night serving as trigger for growth processes is scarce. In this study, one rice ( ) variety (IR64) was examined to assess the impact of varying temperatures and relative air humidities during day and night periods on biomass, leaf area, and dry matter partitioning between organs. Three different day and night temperature (30/20 °C, 25/25 °C, 20/30 °C) and relative air humidity (40/90%, 65/65%, 90/40%) regimes were established. The effect of relative air humidity on both plant dry matter and leaf area was larger than the effect of temperature, in particular low humidity had a strong negative impact during the night. With high day temperature, the shoot mass fraction increased, whereas the root mass fraction decreased. Specific leaf area increased at high night temperatures and led, along with the high leaf mass fraction at high night humidities, to higher growth rates. The results emphasize the importance of considering relative air humidity when focusing on plant responses to temperature, and strongly suggest that under asymmetric day and night temperature increases in the future, biomass partitioning rather than biomass itself will be affected.