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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.

Sec. Functional Plant Ecology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1574468

This article is part of the Research Topic Response and Adaptation of Terrestrial Ecosystem Carbon, Nitrogen, and Water Cycles to Climate Change in Arid Desert Regions View all 9 articles

Unravelling the combined effects of drought and nitrogen addition on carbon assimilation and reserves in Korean pine saplings

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China
  • 2 Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Lanzhou, Gansu Province, China
  • 3 Boku University vienne, Vienna, Vienna, Austria
  • 4 College of Resources and Environment, Shanxi Agricultural University, Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China
  • 5 University of Minnesota Twin Cities, St. Paul, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Climate change profoundly impacts the physiological processes and adaptation strategies of plants. However, the physiological mechanisms of coniferous species responding and adapting to combined drought and nitrogen (N) addition remain unclear. Here, based on 2-year multi-level N addition and drought experiments, we investigated the responses of carbon assimilation (net photosynthetic rate An, stomatal conductance gs and intrinsic water use efficiency WUEi) and carbon reserves (non-structural carbohydrates, NSC) of 7-year-old Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis) saplings. Our results showed that: (1) Drought decreased An and gs, while N addition increased An and decreased gs. N addition decreased An and WUEi but increases gs in plants under drought conditions , indicating that N addition under drought stress will maintain gas exchange by increasing stomatal opening, but failed to mitigate the reduction of An. (2) Both drought (moderate and severe) and N addition reduced leaf NSC concentrations. Under moderate drought stress, however, N addition led to an increase in leaf NSC concentrations. (3) The interconversion between leaf starch and soluble sugars slowed the decrease in carbon assimilation caused by drought. P. koraiensis saplings adopted a conservative strategy of increasing leaf mass per area (LMA) to adapt to reduced water use efficiency. The study highlights the coordinated relationship between carbon assimilation and carbon reserves of Korean pine saplings under combined drought and N addition, which improves our understanding of the diverse carbon dynamics of different species under climate change.

    Keywords: drought, nitrogen deposition, combined abiotic stress effects, Conifers, Nonstructural carbohydrates

    Received: 10 Feb 2025; Accepted: 20 Mar 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Tian, Zhang, Wang, Wu, Rosner, Zhu, Cai and Yuan. 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: Fenghui Yuan, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, St. Paul, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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