ArticleAnnals of botany2025
Halophytic succulence is a driver of the leaf non-structural carbohydrate contents in plants in the arid and hyper-arid deserts of northwestern China.
Article in Annals of botany, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Divergent non-structural carbohydrate allocation strategies in desert shrubs under coal mining-induced environmental gradients in Xinjiang, Northwestern China.BMC plant biology · 2026Article
- Microscopic attributes ofFrontiers in plant science · 2026Article
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5 authors.
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Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
aimsNon-structural carbohydrates (NSC), primarily sugars and starch, play a crucial role in plant metabolic processes and the ability of a plant to tolerate and recover from drought stress. Despite their importance, our understanding of NSC characteristics in the leaves of plants that thrive in hyper-arid and saline environments remains limited.
methodsTo investigate the variations in leaf NSC across different species and spatial scales and to explore their possible causes, we collected 488 leaf samples from 49 native plant species at 115 sites in the desert area of northwestern China. The contents of soluble sugars (SS), starch and total NSC were then determined. KEY
resultsThe average contents of SS, starch and total NSC were 26.99, 60.28 and 87.27 mg g-1, respectively, which are much lower than those reported for Chinese forest plants and global terrestrial plants. Herbaceous and woody plants had similar NSC levels. In contrast, succulent halophytes, a key component of desert flora, showed significantly lower leaf SS and total NSC contents than non-succulent plants. We observed a strong negative correlation between leaf succulence and SS content, suggesting a role of halophytic succulence in driving multispecies NSC pools. Environmental factors explained a minor portion of the spatial variation in leaf NSC, possibly owing to the narrow climatic variation in the study area, and soil properties, particularly soil salinity, emerged as more significant contributors.
conclusionsOur findings increase the understanding of plant adaptation to drought and salt stress, emphasizing the crucial role of halophytic succulence in shaping the intricate dynamics of leaf NSC across diverse plant species in arid and hyper-arid environments.
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