Frontiers in Plant Science最新文献

{"title":"Milling and fermentation influence mineral and phytic acid retention in zinc-biofortified wheat.","authors":"Maria Itria Ibba, Velu Govindan","doi":"10.3389/fpls.2026.1954962","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fpls.2026.1954962","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Wheat biofortification is an effective strategy to reduce micronutrient deficiencies. High retention and bioavailability of these micronutrients during processing is crucial. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of flour extraction rate and food processing on Zn, Fe, and phytic acid (PA) concentrations and indicators of potential mineral bioavailability in 60 Zn-biofortified wheat lines milled at 100%, 85% and 70% extraction rates (ER) and transformed into pan-bread and chapati. Reducing flour extraction rate from 100% to 70% decreased Zn, Fe, and phytic acid concentrations by approximately 70% (49.14 to 14.69 mg/kg), 49% (34.24 to 17.34 mg/kg), and 79% (0.97 to 0.20 g/100 g), respectively. Chapati and pan-bread production did not negatively impact Zn and Fe concentrations; however, PA content declined during processing, with greater reductions observed during pan-bread production due to PA degradation during fermentation. Pan-bread also showed lower phytate molar ratios, indicating improved potential mineral availability. The potential nutritional contribution of these products was evaluated in the context of Pakistan, where wheat is a major dietary staple and average wheat consumption is approximately 280 g/day. Based on this consumption level and theoretical Zn absorption estimates derived from the PA molar ratio, pan-bread produced from 100% ER flour was estimated to provide up to 149% of the physiological Zn requirement for women, while chapati produced from 85% ER flour was estimated to provide 95%.These results indicate that maintaining relatively high flour extraction rates can preserve Zn and Fe, while fermentation can reduce phytic acid and improve indicators of potential mineral availability, highlighting the importance of processing practices for maximizing the nutritional benefits of Zn-biofortified wheat in wheat-dependent populations such as Pakistan.</p>","PeriodicalId":12632,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Plant Science","volume":"17 ","pages":"1954962"},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13683767/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149238138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Precision-weighted mixed models identify high-yielding and temporally stable cowpea germplasm across three growing seasons.","authors":"Sami Jan, M Ashraf Bhat, Akshay Kumar, Nakeeb-Un- Nisa, M Altaf Wani, Farooq Ahmad Bhat, Phalisteen Sultan, Zafir Ahmad Naik","doi":"10.3389/fpls.2026.1926051","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fpls.2026.1926051","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Cowpea is an important multipurpose legume that contributes to food and nutritional security, particularly in regions affected by environmental stress. Identifying high-yielding and stable germplasm is essential for improving breeding efficiency and developing resilient cultivars. However, distinguishing persistent genetic merit from seasonal environmental noise remains challenging when trial precision varies among years.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Evaluated 150 International Institute of Tropical Agriculture cowpea germplasm lines and four repeated checks over three growing seasons (2020-2022) at a temperate site in Kashmir, India, using augmented block trials. Restricted maximum likelihood and best linear unbiased prediction models accounted for genotype × year interaction and year-specific residual variances.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Seed yield per plant showed high genetic variability (GCV 59.75%), Cullis heritability of 0.991, and prediction accuracy of 0.992. The genotype × year-to-genotype variance ratio was 0.017, while across-year genetic correlations for yield were 0.980-0.998, indicating strong preservation of genotype rankings. Residual variance was markedly larger in 2022, and modeling heterogeneous residuals improved AIC by 50.29. IITA-122 had the highest predicted yield (156.94 g plant^-1), 100.60% above the best check, whereas IITA-84 had the best productivity-stability profile (WAASBY 93.85; WAASB 1.61). Thirteen genotypes met an integrated high-confidence selection rule.</p><p><strong>Discussion: </strong>The selected lines demonstrated persistent genetic merit and temporal stability despite differences in trial precision among years. They warrant replicated, multi-location validation because the present study demonstrates temporal stability at a single location rather than broad adaptation.</p>","PeriodicalId":12632,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Plant Science","volume":"17 ","pages":"1926051"},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13683631/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149238124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Unveiling the adaptive strategies in <i>Blumea Balsamifera</i> roots under salt stress through integrated physiological and multi-omics analysis.","authors":"Zejun Mo, Changmao Guo, Su Chen, Kailang Mu, Zhigang Ju, Yuchen Liu, Yuan Yuan, Yuxin Pang","doi":"10.3389/fpls.2026.1970547","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fpls.2026.1970547","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Soil salinization is a growing constraint on agricultural productivity, yet the adaptive mechanisms of many medicinal plants-particularly <i>Blumea balsamifera</i>, a species of significant economic and pharmacological value-remain poorly understood. In this study, five treatments-CK (control), LS (low salt), MS (medium salt), HS (high salt), and EHS (extremely high salt)-were established to systematically investigate the comprehensive effects of salt stress on the growth, physiological metabolism, and molecular regulatory networks of <i>B. balsamifera.</i></p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The results showed that salt stress significantly inhibited the growth of <i>B. balsamifera</i>, causing leaf chlorosis and wilting. In roots, the activities of antioxidant enzymes (SOD, POD, CAT) and the level of malondialdehyde (MDA) initially increased and then decreased, while the accumulation of osmoregulatory substances (PRO, SS, SP) and lignin (LIG) progressively increased. Transcriptomic analysis identified 5,701 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) shared between the HS vs CK and EHS vs CK comparisons, which were significantly enriched in functional terms including transcription factor activity, cell wall organization, plant hormone signal transduction. Metabolomic analysis identified 590 and 647 differentially accumulated metabolites (DAMs) in the HS vs CK and EHS vs CK comparisons, respectively. Under moderate stress, flavonoid synthesis and cutin/suberin biosynthesis pathways were significantly enriched, whereas under extreme stress, the phenylpropanoid pathway, carbohydrate metabolism pathway, and oxylipin/jasmonate-related metabolism pathways were significantly activated. Integrated multi-omics analysis further revealed that cutin, suberin, and wax biosynthesis, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, and oxylipin/jasmonate-related metabolism are the core synergistic pathways in the root response of <i>B. balsamifera</i> to salt stress, mediating physical barrier construction, chemical defense and structural reinforcement, and lipid signal transduction, respectively.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Collectively, these findings uncover a multilayered adaptive strategy in <i>B. balsamifera</i> roots under salt stress, namely physical barrier formation, chemical-structural defense, and membrane lipid signaling. These results provide theoretical insights and key molecular targets for breeding salt-tolerant varieties and developing stress-resilient cultivation strategies.</p>","PeriodicalId":12632,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Plant Science","volume":"17 ","pages":"1970547"},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13683093/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149238188","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Pan-genome analysis of the sunflower <i>LOX</i> gene family: evolution, expression, and salt stress-responsive candidate genes.","authors":"Min Song, Lifen He, Yanzun Wang, Wenjun Liu, Hongyuan Zheng, Wenhao Wang","doi":"10.3389/fpls.2026.1940299","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fpls.2026.1940299","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Sunflower (<i>Helianthus annuus</i> L.), the fourth largest edible oil-producing crop worldwide, has potential for application in the remediation of saline-alkali land. In this regard, lipoxygenase (LOX)-derived metabolites, particularly jasmonic acid, have been established to play positive roles in regulating the tolerance of plants to salt stress. However, using only a single reference genome provides limited genetic resolution, which is insufficient for a comprehensive elucidation of the evolutionary dynamics of the sunflower <i>LOX</i> family at the pan-genome level. In this study, we aimed to characterize the <i>HaLOX</i> gene family across multiple sunflower accessions and explore its evolutionary patterns in response to salt stress. Based on 10 sunflower genomes, we systematically identified the <i>HaLOX</i> family, revealing 220 genes clustered into 27 orthologous gene groups (OGGs) (12 core, 6 softcore, 7 shell, and 2 cloud OGGs). Together with the copy number variations analysis, these findings indicate that dispensable genes reflect the evolutionary diversity of the <i>LOX</i> family among sunflower accessions. Phylogenetic analysis further classified these OGGs into the 9-LOX and 13-LOX subfamilies (ratio, 1:2), a majority of which have undergone purifying selection. In contrast, <i>panHaLOX10</i> and <i>panHaLOX1</i>7 showed statistical support for episodic positive selection, suggesting possible functional divergence in specific sunflower lineages. Tandem duplication and whole-genome duplication (WGD)/segmental duplication were major drivers of <i>HaLOX</i> gene family expansion. Notably, only the 13-LOX subfamily underwent significant expansion via WGD/segmental duplication, whereas the 9-LOX subfamily did not experience such expansion events. In addition, transposon analysis suggested that DNA/hAT, LTR/Copia, and LTR/Gypsy may have contributed to <i>HaLOX</i> evolution, with proportions of 37.6%, 16.5%, and 16.9%, respectively. We also identified a high proportion of putative stress-responsive cis-regulatory elements (CREs) in <i>HaLOX</i> gene promoters (43.9%), among which MYB, MYC, and ABRE were the most abundant CREs. Moreover, RT-qPCR validated the expression patterns of nine 13-LOX genes exposed to salt stress, particularly <i>panHaLOX10/17</i>. Overall, our findings provide preliminary insights into the potential evolutionary implications of dispensable genes, thereby contributing to a better understanding of the evolutionary characteristics and functional differentiation of the <i>HaLOX</i> family, and potentially facilitating the identification of candidate genes for salt tolerance molecular breeding.</p>","PeriodicalId":12632,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Plant Science","volume":"17 ","pages":"1940299"},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13684364/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149238194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Culture medium and plant growth regulator regimes influence the transcriptome and cannabisin accumulation in <i>Cannabis sativa</i> cell suspension cultures.","authors":"Margaux Thiry, Kjell Sergeant, Sylvain Legay, Marcus Iken, Jenny Renaut, Stanley Lutts, Gea Guerriero","doi":"10.3389/fpls.2026.1923697","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fpls.2026.1923697","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Plant cell suspension cultures are a valuable biotechnological platform for the controlled production of high-value phytochemicals. Yet, the molecular mechanisms by which culture medium composition impacts cellular transcriptional programs remain poorly characterised, especially in non-model plant species. Here, we investigated how two culture media, Murashige & Skoog (MS)- and Linsmaier & Skoog (LS)-based, influence growth, gene expression and secondary metabolite production in <i>Cannabis sativa</i> cell suspension cultures derived from a non-commercial genotype, Line 43/178. Cultures were analysed at five time points across a 14-day subculture cycle. Both media supported comparable growth kinetics, with a peak in biomass production reaching values ≥13 g/L dry weight. Transcriptomic analysis identified 2801 differentially expressed contigs with an absolute maximum fold change >10 and revealed distinct growth-stage responses, including early activation of cell cycle and hormone-related genes, intermediate induction of stress and cell wall remodelling pathways and late-stage senescence and redox-related processes. LS induced the expression of genes involved in hydroxycinnamic acid amide and lignanamide production, in agreement with untargeted metabolomic data showing increased accumulation of cannabisin D and cannabisin F, together with marked differences in cell morphology. Spectrophotometric analyses further revealed medium-dependent differences in total phenolic content and antioxidant activity. By adopting a transcriptomic approach coupled to the identification of lignanamides via untargeted metabolomics, the study highlights how medium composition regulates the balance between growth and secondary metabolism in <i>C. sativa</i> cell cultures, providing valuable insights for future optimisation of bioactive compound production using plant cell factories.</p>","PeriodicalId":12632,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Plant Science","volume":"17 ","pages":"1923697"},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13683566/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149238105","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Correction: Nitrogen uptake from soil residual fertilizer by subsequent crops: regulatory effects of previous nitrogen application rate and subsequent irrigation regime.","authors":"Xiaohui Xu, Jingnan Chen, Yiting Cai, Ying Tian, Erzi Zhang, Maomao Hou, Fenglin Zhong, Junyang Lu, Jiajia Li","doi":"10.3389/fpls.2026.2009814","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2026.2009814","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2026.1890496.].</p>","PeriodicalId":12632,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Plant Science","volume":"17 ","pages":"2009814"},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13685545/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149243974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Comparative organelle genome analysis of three medicinal species of the genus <i>Woodwardia</i> (Blechnaceae): new insights into the phylogeny and molecular identification.","authors":"Yutong Huang, Libao Feng, Yanping Xing, Wenxiao Men, Yanchang Huang, Tingguo Kang, Yanyun Yang, Liang Xu","doi":"10.3389/fpls.2026.1905066","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fpls.2026.1905066","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Plants of the genus <i>Woodwardia</i> have a long history of medicinal use in China. Among these plants, <i>Woodwardia japonica, Woodwardia unigemmata</i>, and <i>Woodwardia prolifera</i> are the primary source species of Guan Zhong, a traditional Chinese medicine. However, because of morphological similarity among their dried herbal materials and limited availability of organellar (mitochondrial and chloroplast) genomic data, research on species identification, molecular evolution, and phylogeny has been impeded.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Organelle genomes of the three <i>Woodwardia</i> species were sequenced and assembled using the second- and third-generation sequencing technologies. In-depth analyses were conducted, including protein-coding genes (PCGs) presence/absence, non-synonymous/synonymous mutation ratios (Ka/Ks), codon usage bias, repeat sequence identification, RNA editing site prediction, synteny and mitochondrial-chloroplast homologous fragment (MTPT) identification, and molecular identification via mVISTA and nucleotide diversity. Finally, we employed both maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian (BI) methods, based on single-copy orthologous genes and secondary calibrations, to infer phylogenetic relationships and divergence times among <i>Woodwardia</i> and related ferns.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The mitochondrial genomes of the three <i>Woodwardia</i> species exhibited notable differences in genome size and characteristics; while the chloroplast genomes were relatively conserved and highly similar. Phylogenetic and divergence time analyses indicated that <i>W. unigemmata</i> and <i>W. prolifera</i> are more closely related and diverged more recently. Integrated analyses of highly variable regions and phylogenetic revealed that the intergenic spacer <i>rrn16-rps12_exon2 or rps12_exon2-rrn16</i> could effectively differentiate the three Guan Zhong-related <i>Woodwardia</i> species, suggesting their potential utility as reliable DNA barcodes for identifying medicinal materials.</p><p><strong>Discussion: </strong>The results provide comprehensive insights and reliable, detailed organelle genomic data for the phylogeny and molecular identification of W. japonica, <i>W. unigemmata</i>, and <i>W. prolifera</i>.</p>","PeriodicalId":12632,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Plant Science","volume":"17 ","pages":"1905066"},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13683679/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149238120","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Early signaling events as vital regulators of enzymatic browning in fresh-cut fruits and vegetables: a mini-review.","authors":"Zhaorui Zhu, Xiao Yuan, Siqi Xu, Zhaoxia Zhan, Jinming He, Bin Wang","doi":"10.3389/fpls.2026.1920175","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fpls.2026.1920175","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Unlike intact fruits and vegetables, fresh-cut produce undergoes minimal processing operations that render it highly susceptible to quality deterioration. Among the adverse quality issues, surface browning represents a primary obstacle curtailing the post-processing shelf life and marketability of minimally processed commodities. While classical paradigms regarding fresh-cut browning predominantly center on downstream, polyphenol oxidase-mediated enzymatic reactions, this mini-review highlights the critical importance of early signaling events. These include wounding signal perception, ROS burst, Ca²⁺ signal transduction, rapid phytohormone response, and their subsequent crosstalk during the imitation of browning. Shifting the research paradigm toward a comprehensive upstream regulatory network will pave the way for engineering next-generation postharvest browning interventions.</p>","PeriodicalId":12632,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Plant Science","volume":"17 ","pages":"1920175"},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13684814/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149238102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"CuFormer U-Net: a transformer-enhanced multi-task network for cucumber leaf disease detection and segmentation.","authors":"Batyrkhan Omarov, Sayat Ibrayev, Nurbibi Imanbayeva","doi":"10.3389/fpls.2026.1975030","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fpls.2026.1975030","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Cucumber foliar symptoms reduce functional leaf area and complicate greenhouse scouting. This study presents CuFormer U-Net, a Transformer-enhanced multi-task network for three-class image-level classification on the 3,754-image Kaggle benchmark (healthy, powdery mildew, and downy mildew) and binary visible-symptom segmentation on a separate 400-image greenhouse cohort (200 healthy and 200 affected leaves). The greenhouse annotations comprise 2,705 rectangles (1,741 color-abnormality and 964 tissue-damage instances); rectangle-seeded lesion masks were manually refined for the dense-prediction experiments. The reported fixed-split point estimates were 96.7% accuracy, 96.3% macro precision, 95.8% macro recall, and 96.0% macro F1 for classification, and 92.4% mean image-wise Dice, 83.1% macro IoU, 93.2% foreground precision, and 91.7% foreground recall for segmentation. The complete internal-validation ablation configuration reached 93.1% Dice and 87.3% IoU. The available experiment archive does not contain independent-seed reruns, per-image predictions for inferential testing, annotator-level masks, quantitative results for the separate 100-image greenhouse stress-test cohort, or reproducible hardware profiling. Accordingly, all between-model differences are interpreted descriptively, the external cohort is not presented as formal external validation, and robustness and deployment claims have been moderated. CuFormer U-Net provides a technically motivated basis for joint recognition and spatial characterization, but confirmatory multi-run and multi-site evaluation is required. boundary refinement, cucumber leaf disease, multi-task learning, plant disease, precision agriculture, semantic segmentation, vision transformer.</p>","PeriodicalId":12632,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Plant Science","volume":"17 ","pages":"1975030"},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13683789/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149238118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Leaf economic strategy and stand structural complexity are associated with net woody productivity in a subtropical mixed forest.","authors":"Juyang Wu, Jingjing Huang, Xunru Ai, Qin Xiang, Zhengxiang Wang, Jiang Zhu","doi":"10.3389/fpls.2026.1980200","DOIUrl":"10.3389/fpls.2026.1980200","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The associations of net woody productivity with biodiversity, functional composition, and stand structure remain poorly resolved in subtropical mixed evergreen-deciduous broad-leaved forests. We used the 2016 and 2021 censuses of 150 contiguous 20 × 20 m subplots in a 6-ha permanent plot at Jinzi Mountain, central China. Net woody productivity was calculated as the annualized net change in live woody biomass. Univariate and multiple linear regressions, random forests, and piecewise structural equation modeling were used to examine relationships with community attributes measured in 2016. Live woody biomass increased from 144.78 to 167.86 t·ha^-1, corresponding to a mean net woody productivity of 4.62 t·ha^-1·yr^-1. Net gains were concentrated in the tree stratum and larger diameter and height classes; classes with a diameter at breast height ≥29 cm accounted for 78.53% of community net woody productivity. In univariate regressions, productivity was positively associated with community-weighted mean (CWM) leaf thickness and negatively associated with CWM specific leaf area and leaf area. Multiple regression also identified species relative-abundance structure and stand structural heterogeneity as significant correlates. In the piecewise structural equation model, species diversity and structural diversity had significant positive direct associations with productivity. A principal component representing higher CWM specific leaf area and leaf area but lower CWM leaf thickness had a significant negative direct association. Functional and phylogenetic diversity had nonsignificant direct paths, although Rao's quadratic entropy was negatively associated with productivity in the multiple regression. These relationships may partly reflect differences in baseline biomass stocks, which were not included as predictors. Retention of healthy large canopy trees, woody-species diversity, and heterogeneous stand structure warrants consideration in close-to-nature forest management, but its consequences for productivity require further testing.</p>","PeriodicalId":12632,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Plant Science","volume":"17 ","pages":"1980200"},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13680441/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149231058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}