Testing the 'microbubble effect' using the Cavitron technique to measure xylem water extraction curves.

ABSTRACT: Plant resistance to xylem cavitation is a major drought adaptation trait and is essential to characterizing vulnerability to climate change. Cavitation resistance can be determined with vulnerability curves. In the past decade, new techniques have increased the ease and speed at which vulnerability curves are produced. However, these new techniques are also subject to new artefacts, especially as related to long-vesselled species. We tested the reliability of the 'flow rotor' centrifuge technique, the so-called Cavitron, and investigated one potential mechanism behind the open vessel artefact in centrifuge-based vulnerability curves: the microbubble effect. The microbubble effect hypothesizes that microbubbles introduced to open vessels, either through sample flushing or injection of solut

SUBMITTER: Pivovaroff AL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4804203 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature