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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Genet.
Sec. Genomics of Plants and the Phytoecosystem
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fgene.2025.1534894
This article is part of the Research Topic Survival Strategies and Biotechnological Applications of Plants in Extreme Environments View all articles
Effects of drought pretreatment on the morphology traits, biomass, and stoichiometric characteristics of the desert ephemeral plant
Provisionally accepted- School of Geography and Tourism, Qufu Normal University, Rizhao, China
In the context of climate change, the frequency and intensity of droughts in arid and semi-arid areas have shown a substantially increasing trend, which inevitably affects plant survival and growth. However, it is unclear what survival and growth strategies plants subjected to drought pretreatment in the early life stages adopt when facing subsequent drought stress. Here, we conducted a field experiment and set up two treatments, control and drought pretreatment, to investigate the effects of drought pretreatment on the survival, phenology, morphology, biomass, and stoichiometric characteristics of the ephemeral plant Erodium oxyrhinchum in the Gurbantunggut Desert, China. The results showed that the leafing, flowering, and fruiting stages under drought pretreatment occurred markedly earlier than the control treatment by 5.25±1.2 d, 3.13±0.84 d, and 4.75±1.63 d, respectively. The life history of E. oxyrhinchum decreased 5±1.38 d under drought pretreatment. Drought pretreatment accelerated seedling mortality, leading to a faster and earlier decline in survival percentage. The survival percentage of E. oxyrhinchum under drought pretreatment at the full blooming stage was approximately 18.59%, which was 5.19% higher than that of the control treatment. In addition, a positive correlation was observed between morphological traits and individual biomass, and drought pretreatment substantially increased individual biomass and reproductive output. For example, the reproductive biomass under drought pretreatment was 1.41 times than that of the control treatment during the full fruiting stage, indicating that plants subjected to drought pretreatment exhibited an overcompensation effect. Finally, from the perspective of stoichiometric characteristics, plants subjected to drought pretreatment require more phosphorus to enhance their resistance to severe drought. This study provides novel insights for the conservation and restoration of desert ecosystems in the context of climate change.
Keywords: Drought pretreatment, Overcompensation effect, Erodium oxyrhinchum, ephemeral plant, The Gurbantunggut Desert
Received: 26 Nov 2024; Accepted: 03 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Li, Gong, Zhang, Pan, Cao and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yanfeng Chen, School of Geography and Tourism, Qufu Normal University, Rizhao, China
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