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Publications

NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.

2011

2010

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Sammendrag

Seedlings of open pollinated Picea abies families from Norwegian and Central European parent trees standing at three sites in Norway were tested for timing of bud set at the end of the first growth season together with seedlings from control provenances producing seeds at their geographical origin. The parental origins were confirmed with a maternally inherited mitochondrial marker that distinguishes trees of the Northern European range from those of the Central European range. The seedlings from the families of Central European mother trees producing seeds in Norway had on average a bud set more similar to the families of local Norwegian origin producing seeds at the same site than the provenance of the same Central European origin. It is argued that the rapid change in this adaptive trait from one generation to the next can be explained by recent research results demonstrating that day length and temperature conditions during embryo formation and maturation can influence the phenotypic performance of seedlings in Norway spruce. This effect may influence the fitness of naturally regenerated plants produced in plantations of Central European trees in Norway.

Sammendrag

We have recently found that Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) can rapidly adjust its adaptive performance, probably through an epigenetic mechanism. This appears to employ a kind of long-term memory of temperature sum and (probably) photoperiod from the time of its embryo development. In our research we made identical controlled crosses and produced seed lots under controlled temperature and day-length conditions and later observed phenology, growth and hardiness traits in the progenies. It was repeatedly found that temperature conditions during seed set, in particular, influence the phenotypes of the offspring; seedlings from seeds produced under warm conditions have later terminal bud set and reduced autumn frost hardiness than those from seed produced under colder conditions, and thus perform like a more southern provenance. When embryonic clones were derived from mature zygotic embryos and were cultured at different temperatures, the plants cultured under warm in vitro temperature were the last to set bud and grew taller than those cultured at lower temperatures. Progenies produced in Norway by Central European mother trees had a bud set curve skewed towards that of the local Norwegian performance. A comparison of the performance of seedlings from seeds collected in the same provenance regions in 1970 and 2006 shows that the more recent seed lots consistently produce taller seedlings with a later bud set, probably due to higher temperatures during seed production in 2006. The effect of reproductive environment has been shown to persist for years. It mimics the variation between provenances from different latitudes and altitudes and may explain much of the observed variability in bud set and early height growth between natural populations of Norway spruce. The observed phenomenon suggests an epigenetic mechanism in the developing embryo, either zygotic or somatic, that senses environmental signals such as temperature and influences adaptive traits. Research is underway to understand the molecular basis of this mechanism. We will discuss the implications of this epigenetic phenomenon for the interpretation of provenance differences, for tree breeding and for its possible role in adaptation to climate change.

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Sammendrag

Dormancy release as influenced by duration of outdoor winter chilling in Florence (Italy) was studied under different photoperiodic and temperature treatments in collected twigs of two European (Ulmus glabra Huds. and Ulmus minor Mill.) and four Asian (Ulmus pumila L., Ulmus parvifolia Jacq., Ulmus macrocarpa Hance and Ulmus villosa Brandis) elm clones. Photoperiod had no effect on dormancy release, and there was no evidence that photoperiod affected bud burst during quiescence in the studied elm clones. Thermal time (day degrees >0 °C) to bud burst decreased in all the clones with increasing outdoor chilling. Although all the clones exhibited a rather weak dormancy, they significantly differed from each other. Dormancy was released earlier in the Asian than in the European clones, and the clones could be ranked from the U. pumila clone (very weak and short dormancy) to the U. minor clone (relatively stronger and longer dormancy), the other clones being intermediate. In all the clones except U. minor, the observed decrement in thermal time to bud burst was efficiently explained as an inverse exponential function of the number of chill days ≤5 °C received outdoor in autumn and winter. Endodormancy, as measured by the single-node cuttings test, was weak and short in all the clones. The latter result suggests that correlative inhibitions were largely responsible for preventing bud burst during winter in these elm clones.