New progress has been made in research on plant nitrogen absorption capacity and utilization strategy in winter

New progress has been made in research on plant nitrogen absorption capacity and utilization strategy in winter

New progress has been made in the research on plant nitrogen absorption capacity and utilization strategies in winter

Recently, Wang Renzhong, a researcher from the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, used temperate forests in China as the research object and used 13C15N double-labeled isotope tracing to systematically reveal the winter nitrogen absorption capacity and nitrogen utilization strategies of trees, shrubs and herbs in temperate forests
.

Related research results were published in the international academic journal "Journal of Ecology"

In winter, nearly 50% of terrestrial ecosystems in the northern hemisphere experience seasonal snow cover and soil freezing
.

Due to the adiabatic effect of snow or frozen layers, soil nitrogen mineralization, which mainly affects the physiological and ecological activities of plants, is still going on

Researchers have found that deciduous trees and shrubs have the same nitrogen absorption capacity as evergreen plants throughout the winter, while herbaceous plants only begin to use nitrogen during the snowmelt period
.

Different functional plants can use inorganic nitrogen and simple amino acids, and only trees can use complex amino acids

The researchers combined with related research on the nitrogen absorption capacity of plants in the northern hemisphere, and further proposed a conceptual model of winter nitrogen absorption in seasonal snow-covered ecosystems
.

The model believes that soil microorganisms, evergreen plants and deciduous plants have strong nitrogen competition in winter, and different functional plants have different nitrogen utilization strategies

Ma Linna, an associate researcher at the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences , and Xu Xiaofeng, a professor at San Diego State University, are the co-first authors of the paper, and Wang Renzhong is the corresponding author
.

The research work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Key Research and Development Program

Chinese Academy of Sciences

Related paper information: https://doi.

https://doi.
org/10.
1111/1365-2745.
13754