It is well known that photosynthetic health impacts the overall fitness of the mature plant. This study aims to determine photosynthetic vigour of spring wheat cultivars during field development as well as their biomass composition at maturity to determine which cultivars/varieties would be optimum for cellulosic ethanol production. Additionally, specimens were grown at non-acclimating (20˚C), cold acclimating (5˚C), non-acclimating high CO2 (20˚C/750 µmol mol-1 CO2) and cold-acclimating high CO2 (5˚C/750 µmol mol-1 CO2) to resolve photosynthetic responses to different environments. Plants were photoinhibited under high irradiance (5 fold growth irradiance) and low temperature (5˚C) while photochemical efficiency of PSII was monitored throughout using chlorophyll fluorescence imaging. Vegetative production was monitored using normalised difference vegetation index. De-epoxidation of xanthophyll photoprotective pigments were also recorded using HPLC and photochemical reflectance index. Additionally, carbon assimilation rate was recorded with infra-red gas analysis methods. It was discovered that no one wheat cultivar demonstrated any photosynthetic advantage in the field or under photoinhibitory conditions. However, photosynthetic differences were observed between wheat grown in different environments. Plants that were cold-acclimated or grown under high CO2 were more resilient to photoinhibitory stress. This was also reflected by most cold-acclimated cultivars having increased triose phosphate utilization, electron transport and zeaxanthin induction. Plants acclimated to high CO2 at room temperature also displayed increased electron transport and triose phosphate utilization but had decreased zeaxanthin induction. It is hypothesized increased excitation pressure in cold acclimated and high CO2 cultivars allowed for their increase in the development of photoinhibitory tolerance.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:USASK/oai:usask.ca:etd-05312010-133527 |
| Date | 22 June 2010 |
| Creators | Chytyk, Cody John |
| Contributors | Todd, Christopher D., Gray, Gordon R., Khandelwal, Ramji, Warrington, Rob, Guo, Xulin |
| Publisher | University of Saskatchewan |
| Source Sets | University of Saskatchewan Library |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-05312010-133527/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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