Interspecific variability of biomass production of young Coffea: No influence of branch pruning. Experimental evidence and theoretical analysis

Abstract

Understanding the mechanisms of plant adaptation to their habitat can help developing relevant conservation politics, which is a crucial issue for several Coffea species. This comes through an understanding of the links between genetic diversity and architectural plasticity. In this study, we investigated the biomass production and allocation strategies of young Coffea trees for nine African species with different countries of origin, that were submitted to a pruning treatment. It revealed that despite large inter-specific differences, the pruning treatment had no influence on biomass production and allocation for these young trees. We propose a theoretical analysis of this result, based on classical modelling hypotheses.