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CO2 Enrichment of Air Enhances Growth of Tissue-Cultured Plants

Paper Reviewed
Perez-Jimenez, M., Lopez-Perez, A.J., Otalora-Alcon, G., Marin-Nicolas, D., Pinero, M.C. and del Amor, F.M. 2015. A regime of high CO2 concentration improves the acclimatization process and increases plant quality and survival. Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture 121: 547-557.

Tissue culture is a technique that is used to maintain or grow plant cells, tissues or organs under sterile conditions on a nutrient culture medium. It is widely used to produce clones of plants via a method known as micro-propagation. And writing in the journal Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture, Perez-Jimenez et al. (2015) discuss what they recently learned from an experiment they conducted with micro-propagated in vitro plants of Cynara scolymus L. cv. 'Romanesco," where the acclimatization stage of the process was performed within controlled-climate chambers that were specifically designed for plant research purposes, where the air within one of the chambers was continuously maintained at an atmospheric CO2 concentration of approximately 380 ppm, while the air of another chamber was kept at approximately 800 ppm of CO2.

This experiment lasted three weeks, during which period the six Spanish scientists say that "physiological measurements -- such as plant water status and growth, electrolyte leakage, net CO2 assimilation, internal CO2, stomatal conductance, transpiration, chlorophyll fluorescence, free amino acids, photosynthetic pigments and lipid peroxidation -- were taken every four days." And what did they thereby learn?

Perez-Jimenez et al. report that during their experiment, "plants cultured under CO2 enrichment exhibited [1] earlier stomatal control and [2] a rapid increase in photosynthetic rates." They also indicate that [3] relative water content and [4] water use efficiency "were higher than in plants cultured at ambient CO2." And as a result of these findings, plus those related to the many other phenomena they scrutinized, they conclude that the use of elevated CO2 in plant acclimatization results in "an increase of plant survival and quality."


Net CO2 assimilation rate (ACO2, left panel) and water use efficiency (WUE, right panel), defined as the ratio of net CO2 assimilation rate to transpiration rate (E), in Cynara scolymus before, during and after acclimatization at 800 ppm CO2 (800) and at the ambient concentration of CO2 (control). Adapted from Perez-Jimenez et al. (2015).

Posted 21 August 2015