earticle

영어

Pinus koraiensis is famous for its high-quality timber production all the way and is much more famous for its high value health-care nut oil production potential since 1990’s, but the less understanding of its reproduction biology seriously hindered its nut productivity increase. Exploring the effects of reproduction on nutrient uptake, allocation and storage can help to understand and modify reproduction patterns in masting of such species and high nut yield cultivar selection and breeding. Here, we compared seasonality in growth and in nitrogen ([N]) and phosphorus ([P]) concentrations in needles, branches and cones of reproductive (cone-bearing) and vegetative branches (having no cones) of Pinus koraiensis during a masting year. The growth of one- and two-year-old reproductive branches was significantly higher than that of vegetative branches. Needle, phloem and xylem [N] and [P] were lower in reproductive branches than that in vegetative branches, although the extent and significance of the differences between branch types varied across dates. [N] and [P] in most tissues were high in spring, decreased during summer, and then recovered at the end of the growing season. Overall, [N] and [P] were highest in needles, lowest in xylem and intermediate in phloem. More than half of the N (73.5%) and P (51.6%) content in reproductive branches were allocated to cones. There was a positive correlation between cone number and N and P content in needles and twigs of two-year-old reproductive branches. High nutrient sink strength of cones and vegetative tissues of reproductive branches suggested that the customized fertilization practices can help improve crop yield in Pinus koraiensis.