Application of pneumatic method to build vulnerability curves in solitary vesseled trees: Assessement of vulnerability to cavitation of three Eucalyptus species

BARIGAH, T.S.; FERNÁNDEZ ME; SERGENT AS; VARELA S.; COCHARD H; DELZON S; DALLA SALDA G; ROZENBERG P; MARTÍNEZ MEIER A; MARTIN-ST PAUL NK; GYENGE JE

Padua

Workshop; 4th Xylem International Meeting; 2019

Forestry species should exhibit both high survival and fast growth rate. From this point of view, Eucalyptus is an interesting genus since it inhabits a wide diversity of climatic and environmental conditions and covers more than 20 million planted hectares worldwide. This genus presents solitary vessels, i.e. not directly connected to other vessels but surrounded by different imperforate tracheary elements and parenchyma that participate in a less known form in xylem safety and hydraulic efficiency. Thus, we carried out an experiment to check out whether a recently issued pneumatic device is relevant for establishing vulnerability curves for long or solitary vesseled plant-species, mainly in E. camaldulensis, E.globulus and E. viminalis. We obtained ?S-shaped? curves and the results were similar to data already published. Moreover, we showed that there was no significant intraspecific difference between local E. globulus provenances in their water potential inducing 50% loss of hydraulic conductivity (Y50). Considering the vulnerability to cavitation of these species, it came out that E. camaldulensis (-3.98 MPa) and E. viminalis (-4.26 MPa) were similar and that E. globulus (-4.60 MPa) was slightly more resistant than the previous ones (P < 0.0001). We concluded that the method was suitable for these species.