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Introduction
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January 2003 - April 2010
September 2011 - present
Publications
Publications (78)
Main conclusions
In contrast to Neltuma species, S. tamarugo exhibited higher stress tolerance, maintaining photosynthetic performance through enhanced gene expression and metabolites. Differentially accumulated metabolites include chlorophyll and carotenoids and accumulation of non-nitrogen osmoprotectants.
Abstract
Plant species have developed d...
Allopolyploidy is a common speciation mechanism in plants; however, its physiological and ecological consequences in niche partitioning have been scarcely studied. In this sense, leaf traits are good proxies to study the adaptive capacity of allopolyploids and diploid parents to their respective environmental conditions. In the present work, leaf w...
A trade-off between allocated resources for photosynthesis and stress tolerance is generally observed in nature. Thus, the search for outlier species breaking this trend is an interesting approach to identity new mechanisms for plant breeding purposes. Hypothetically, outlier extremophyte species present a distinctive arrangement of physiological f...
A trade-off between allocated resources for photosynthesis and stress tolerance is generally observed in nature. Thus, the search for outlier species breaking this trend is an interesting approach to identity new mechanisms for plant breeding purposes. Hypothetically, outlier extremophyte species present a distinctive arrangement of physiological f...
Theoretically, the coexistence of diploids and related polyploids is constrained by reproductive and competitive mechanisms. Although niche differentiation can explain the commonly observed co-occurrence of cytotypes, the underlying ecophysiological differentiation among cytotypes has hardly been studied. We compared the leaf functional traits of t...
Deschampsia antarctica is one of the only two native vascular plants in Antarctica, mostly located in the ice-free areas of the Peninsula´s coast and adjacent islands. This region is characterized by a short growing season, frequent extreme climatic events and soils with reduced nutrient availability. However, it is unknown whether its photosynthet...
New and emerging technologies could play a critical role in the viticulture and winemaking of the future. Climate change has threatened the status quo within the viticultural and wine industry due to increased ambient temperatures, the variability of precipitation, and the increase of climatic risks. These main threats are specifically related to t...
Field high-throughput phenotyping (HTPP) studies are highly needed to study water use efficiency (WUE), stress tolerance capacities, yield and quality in tomato to improve crop breeding strategies and adapt them to the climatic change scenario. In this study, UAV remote sensing is tested by comparison with leaf-level physiologic and agronomic measu...
Recent results suggest that metabolism-mediated stomatal closure mechanisms are important to regulate differentially the stomatal speediness between ferns and angiosperms. However, evidence directly linking mesophyll metabolism and the slower stomatal conductance (g s) in ferns is missing. Here we investigated the effect of exogenous application of...
The alternative oxidase pathway (AOP) is associated with excess energy dissipation in leaves of terrestrial plants. To address whether this association is less important in palustrine plants, we compared the role of AOP in balancing energy and carbon metabolism in palustrine and terrestrial environments by identifying metabolic relationships betwee...
Recent results suggest that metabolism-mediated stomatal closure mechanisms are important to regulate differentially the stomatal speediness between ferns and angiosperms. However, evidence directly linking mesophyll metabolism and the slower stomatal conductance (gs) in ferns is missing. Here we investigated the effect of exogenous application of...
The key role of cell walls in setting mesophyll conductance to CO2 (gm) and, consequently, photosynthesis, is reviewed. First, the theoretical properties of cell walls that can affect gm are presented. Then, we focus on cell wall thickness (Tcw) reviewing empirical evidence showing that Tcw varies strongly among species and phylogenetic groups in a...
Ensuring global food security is a worldwide major concern considering the predicted climate change scenarios for the main agricultural regions of the world. Stomatal conductance (gs) and mesophyll conductance (gm) are major drivers limiting photosynthesis (A). Both conductances frequently impose about two-thirds of the total photosynthetic limitat...
Enhanced photosynthesis is strictly associated with to productivity and it can be accomplished by genetic approaches through identification of genetic variation. By using a Solanum pennellii introgression lines (ILs) population, it was previously verified that, under normal (CO2), IL 2–5 and 2–6 display increased photosynthetic rates by up to 20% i...
Cell wall thickness is widely recognized as one of the main determinants of mesophyll conductance to CO2 (gm). However, little is known about the components that regulate cell wall effective CO2 diffusivity (i.e. the ratio between actual porosity and tortuosity, the other two biophysical diffusion properties of cell walls). The aim of this study wa...
Resurrection plants recover physiological functions after complete desiccation. Almost all of them are native to tropical warm environments. However, the Gesneriaceae include four genera, remnant of the past palaeotropical flora, which inhabit temperate mountains. One of these species is additionally freezing‐tolerant: Ramonda myconi. We hypothesis...
Besides stomata, the photosynthetic CO2 pathway also involves the transport of CO2 from the sub-stomatal air spaces inside to the carboxylation sites in the chloroplast stroma, where Rubisco is located. This pathway is far to be a simple and direct way, formed by series of consecutive barriers that the CO2 should cross to be finally assimilated in...
By collecting data at spatial and temporal scales that are inaccessible to satellite and field observation, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are revolutionizing a number of scientific and management disciplines. UAVs may be particularly valuable for precision agricultural applications, offering strong potential to improve the efficiency of water, nu...
The species Deschampsia antarctica (DA) is one of the only two native vascular species that live in Antarctica. We performed ecophysiological, biochemical and metabolomic studies to investigate the responses of DA to low temperature. In parallel, we assessed the responses in a non-Antarctic reference species (Triticum aestivum, TA) from the same fa...
Concentrated erosion, a major feature of land degradation, represents a serious problem for soil and water resources management and a threat to ecosystems. Understanding the internal mechanisms (de‐)coupling sediment pathways can improve the management and resilience of catchments. In this study, concentrated erosion and deposition forms were mappe...
In this work, we review the physiological and molecular mechanisms that allow vascular plants to perform photosynthesis in extreme environments, such as deserts, polar and alpine ecosystems. Specifically, we discuss the morpho/anatomical, photochemical and metabolic adaptive processes that enable a positive carbon balance in photosynthetic tissues...
Understanding the strategies employed by plant species that live in extreme environments offers the possibility to discover stress tolerance mechanisms. We studied the physiological, antioxidant and metabolic responses to three temperature conditions (4, 15, and 23°C) of Colobanthus quitensis (CQ), one of the only two native vascular species in Ant...
Until recently, few data were available on photosynthesis and its underlying mechanistically limiting factors in plants, other than crops and model species. Currently, a new large pool of data from extant representatives of basal terrestrial plant groups is emerging, allowing exploration of how photosynthetic capacity (Amax) increases from minimum...
Stomatal responses to environmental signals differ substantially between ferns and angiosperms. However, the mechanisms that lead to such different responses remain unclear.
Here we investigated the extent to which leaf metabolism contributes to coordinate the differential stomatal behaviour among ferns and angiosperms.
Stomata from all species wer...
Mesophyll conductance (gm), the CO2 diffusion from substomatal cavities to the carboxylation sites in the chloroplasts, is a highly complex trait driving photosynthesis (AN). However, little is known concerning the mechanisms allowing its dynamic regulation. The apoplast is considered as a “key information bridge” between the environment and the ce...
Plants in the high Arctic are exposed to a 24-h photoperiod for several months. These conditions can be damaging for plants at lower latitudes. When common crops are artificially maintained under continuous light (CL), photosynthetic processes maintain endogenous circadian rhythms, but it is unclear whether plants naturally acclimated to CL also ma...
Thiol-disulfide redox exchanges are widely distributed modifications of great importance for metabolic regulation in living cells. In general, the formation of disulfide bonds is controlled by thioredoxins (TRXs), ubiquitous proteins with two redox-active cysteine residues separated by a pair of amino acids. While the function of plastidial TRXs ha...
In this study, a low-cost unmanned aerial vehicle was used to obtain multi-spectral high-resolution imagery (1.4 cm px ⁻¹ ) from 2 microcatchments (3.3 ha) with burned Mediterranean shrubland and pine forests. This imagery was used to calculate the blue normalized differential vegetation index and to generate digital elevation models for estimating...
Thioredoxins (Trxs) modulate metabolic responses during stress conditions; however the mechanisms governing the responses of plants subjected to multiple drought events and the role of Trxs under these conditions are not well understood. Here we explored the significance of the mitochondrial Trx system in Arabidopsis following exposure to single an...
Desiccation tolerant (DT) plants withstand complete cellular dehydration, reaching relative water contents (RWC) below 30% in their photosynthetic tissues. Desiccation sensitive (DS) plants exhibit different degrees of dehydration tolerance (DHT), never surviving water loss >70%. To date, no procedure for the quantitative evaluation of DHT extent e...
Earth primary productivity reflects the balance between two important biological processes: photosynthesis and respiration (Atkin et al. 2015; Niinemets 2016). Photosynthesis (A) refers to the assimilation of the atmospheric CO2 and its conversion into sugars, the first basic organic compounds entering the metabolism. This process of CO2 fixation u...
Plant Ecophysiology is the study on how Plant Physiology is modulated by the environment. This discipline could have benefited greatly from the development of the different ‘omic’ technologies (from genomics to metabolomics). Instead, the overall impression is that ecophysiology and ‘omics’ have developed mostly independent each other. Here we prov...
Plant atmospheric CO2 fixation depends on the aperture of stomatal pores at the leaf epidermis. Stomatal aperture or closure is regulated by changes in the metabolism of the two surrounding guard cells, which respond directly to environmental and internal cues such as mesophyll-derived metabolites. Sucrose has been shown to play a dual role during...
Wildfire in abandoned terraces represents a challenge of land management and soil protection in the Mediterranean region due to afforestation of former agricultural land is a major driving force in changing fire regimes and hence land degradation. The effects on
physicochemical and biological parameters caused by wildfires on abandoned terraces and...
Background
There is currently a high requirement for field phenotyping methodologies/technologies to determine quantitative traits related to crop yield and plant stress responses under field conditions.
Methods
We employed an unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with a thermal camera as a high-throughput phenotyping platform to obtain canopy level da...
Resum Els incendis forestals són considerats un dels factors causals més importants en els processos de desertificació. Els territoris insulars com Mallorca són particularment sensibles als impactes antròpics, per la seva major fragilitat socioecològica. L'increment de superfície cremada a Mallorca d'ençà el 2011 esperoneja a vincular gestió forest...
Plant metabolism drives plant development and plant-environment responses, and data read-outs from this cellular level could provide insights in the underlying molecular processes. Existing studies have already related key in vivo leaf gas-exchange parameters with structural traits and nutrient components across multiple species. However, insights...
Harpin proteins produced by plant-pathogenic Gram-negative bacteria are the venerable player in regulating bacterial virulence and inducing plant growth and defenses. A major gap in these effects is plant sensing linked to cellular responses, and plant sensor for harpin Hpa1 from rice bacterial blight pathogen points to plasma membrane intrinsic pr...
Ferns and fern allies have low photosynthetic rates compared with seed plants. Their photosynthesis is thought to be limited principally by physical CO 2 diffusion from the atmosphere to chloroplasts.
The aim of this study was to understand the reasons for low photosynthesis in species of ferns and fern allies (Lycopodiopsida and Polypodiopsida). W...
Water limitation is a major global constraint for plant productivity that is likely to be exacerbated by climate change. Hence, improving plant water use efficiency (WUE) has become a major goal for the near future. At the leaf level, WUE is the ratio between photosynthesis and transpiration. Maintaining high photosynthesis under water stress, whil...
Eucryphia cordifolia Cav. is a long-lived evergreen tree species, commonly found as a canopy emergent tree in the Chilean temperate rain forest. This species displays successive leaf cohorts throughout the entire growing season. Thus, full leaf expansion occurs under different environmental conditions during growing such as air temperature, vapor p...
The climate change conditions predicted for the end of the current century are expected to have an impact on the performance of plants under natural conditions. The variables which are foreseen to have a larger effect are increased CO2 concentration and temperature. Although it is generally considered CO2 assimilation rate could be increased by the...
Ferns are thought to have lower photosynthetic rates than angiosperms and they lack fine stomatal regulation. However, no study has directly compared photosynthesis in plants of both groups grown under optimal conditions in a common environment. We present a common garden comparison of seven angiosperms and seven ferns paired by habitat preference,...
Drought importantly affects plant growth, productivity and berry quality, thus, is one of the main concerns for the agriculture and food industry worldwide.
Most of the measurements used to characterize plant status are developed at the leaf level, while the improvement of agricultural management requires an up-scaling of this information to the c...
Strong constitutive promoters, such as CaMV35S, are widely used for plant transformation, but undesirable phenotypic changes have been reported when used to drive biotic stress tolerance and/or for modifying lignin content. The promoter of the eucalyptus cinnamoyl CoA reductase (CCR), a key enzyme of the lignin biosynthetic pathway, was shown to be...
PCR amplification of nptII (a), uidA (b) and virD2 (c) genes. Lanes 1-10: transformed Eucalyptus globulus explants. Lane 11: no DNA added; lane 12: untransformed Eucalyptus globulus DNA; lane 13, DNA extracted from Agrobacterium containing p35S GUS int; lane 14, molecular weight marker (Promega® 1 kB ladder). PCR was carried out one month after tra...
Plant acclimation is a highly complex process, which cannot be fully understood by analysis at any one specific level (i.e. subcellular, cellular or whole plant scale). Various soft-computing techniques, such as neural networks or fuzzy logic, were designed to analyze complex multivariate data sets and might be used to model large such multiscale d...
Two highly contrasting variables summarizing the efficiency of transport of materials within the leaf are recognized as playing central roles in determining gas exchange and plant performance. This paper summarizes current approaches for the measurement of mesophyll conductance to CO2 (g m) and leaf hydraulic conductance (K leaf) and addresses the...
Climate change models predict that Mediterranean region, where the most important wine-producer countries worldwide are present, will experience increased frequency and severity of drought periods. Consequently, there is an increased requirement for improvement in the irrigation assessment of vineyards. It was described that grapevine water status...
Fruit gas-exchange chamber coupled to Li-Cor 6400 for carbon balance measurements in vineyards, first checks. No leaks observed.
Measuring tomato respiration with our new designed chamber coupled to Li-Cor 6400
Yesterday we made the first grape respiration measurements in our new own-designed chamber for this purpose, the results were nice. We will start to use it in our experiments!
Maximum photosynthesis rates in ferns are generally lower than those of seed plants, but little is known about the limiting factors, which are crucial to understand the evolution of photosynthesis in land plants. To address this issue, a gas exchange / chlorophyll fluorescence analysis was performed in three fern species spanning high phylogenetic...
In a previous study, important acclimation to water stress was observed in the Ramellet tomato cultivar (TR) from the Balearic Islands, related to an increase in the water use efficiency through modifications in both stomatal (g(s) ) and mesophyll conductances (g(m) ). In the present work, the comparison of physiological and morphological traits be...
Mesophyll diffusion conductance to CO(2) is a key photosynthetic trait that has been studied intensively in the past years. The intention of the present review is to update knowledge of g(m), and highlight the important unknown and controversial aspects that require future work. The photosynthetic limitation imposed by mesophyll conductance is larg...
In this chapter we overview the recent advances in Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of the wheat, but we also proposed the utility of artificial intelligence technologies as a modeling tool used to understand the complex cause–effect relationships between the most common parameters used in Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of the cereals t...
Improvement of the plant characteristics by transfer of selected genes into fruit plant cells is possible mainly through two principal methods: Agrobacterium-mediated transformation and microprojectile bombardment (also called “biolistic” or “bioballistic”). Soil-borne Gram negative bacteria of the genus Agrobacterium infect a wound surface of the...
Plant tissue growth can be regulated and controlled via culture media composition. A number of different laborious and time-consuming approaches have been used to attempt development of optimized media for a wide range of species and applications. However, plant tissue culture is a very complex task, and the identification of the influences of proc...
In the view of the economic importance of grapevine and the increasing threaten represented by vascular diseases, transgenic grapevine with enhanced tolerance could represent an attractive opportunity. Hitherto, constitutive promoters have been used generally to study the effects of transgene expression in grapevine. Given the fact that constitutiv...
This study employs artificial neural networks (ANNs) to create a model to identify relationships between variables affecting the in vitro rhizogenesis and acclimatization of two cultivars of Vitis vinifera L. Albariño and Mencía. The effects of three factors (inputs), the type of cultivar, concentration and exposure time to indolebutyric acid (IBA)...