Flower and fruit formation of Hexachlamys edulis in Buenos Aires, Argentina
From Firenze University Press Journal: Journal of Agriculture and Environment for International Development (JAEID)
Silvia Radice, CONICET, University of Moron
Ignacio Povilonis, CONICET, University of Moron
Miriam Arean, CONICET, University of Moron
Southern Hemisphere of the planet has a great biodiversity of autochthonous or endemic plant species that are not only important as a food source but also constitute an invaluable source of substances with therapeutic and dyeing properties. It is known that man has used plants for medicinal purposes since ancient times and according to the World Health Organization (Petrovska, 2012), about 75% of the world’s population depends almost exclusively on the use of plants for health caring. Hexachlamys edulis(O. Berg) Kausel & D. Legrand, “ubajay”is a Myrtaceae species included in the tribe Myrteaethat is the largest tribe in the plant family with fleshy fruits. In fact, among its representatives with edible fruit arefeijoa(Feijoa sellowiana), guava(Psidium guajava), jabuticaba(Plinia cauliflora), Surinam cherry(Eugenia uniflora), strawberry guava(Psidium cattleyanum), camu camu(Myrciaria dubia), arazá(Eugenia stipitata), and rumberry(Myrciaria floribunda). All these species, included H. edulis,havea wide distribution in tropical and warm-temperate regions of the South America.H. edulis is certainly a prominent species, with potentially nutraceutical fruits, leaves and other organs with importantuses that make it a tree that can provide great benefits for human health and new alternatives for production systems (Povilonis et al.,2021).Levels of polyphenols and pigments together with the antioxidant activity allow us to consider H. edulis fruit as a functional food (Arena et al., 2021).Nevertheless, there are not yet enough scientific studies on its physiology and productive capacity.The timing of phenological events such as budburst, leaf-expansion, abscission, flowering, fertilization, seedset, fruiting, seed dispersal and germination can be quite sensitive to environmental conditions mainly climatic, being temperature, solarradiation, and water availability the key of factors that control plant phenology (Guesmi, 2021). Study of reproductive phenology and its interactions with the ecosystem provides the necessary tools for understanding the biology of a species (Kebede and Isotalo, 2016).For this purpose, floral phenology shows the natural evolution of flower buds in all their stages until the formation of the fruit in relation to the climatic conditions (Barret et al., 2021). In addition,analysis of phenology is a determining factor for the study of climate change,which also allows predicting the distribution of tree species through the biological processes of survival and reproductive success as suggested by Chuine andBeaubien (2001).Also, it is interesting to explore the plasticity of the species that possibilityto enlarge theproduction area.In effect, some previous studies showed that ubajay could be grown in Moreno (Buenos Aires province)(Quintavalle, 2020 ̧ Arena et al., 2021).In fact, a well-known example was the plasticity of the speciesBerberis microphyllathat was well adapted to extremely diverse conditions of its place of origin as well as the climate of Moreno (Radice et al., 2018). It is known that changes in climatic and edaphic factors strongly influence the growth and reproduction of a species.Thus,phenology patterns displayed by plants are adaptations to the surrounding abiotic and biotic environments (Radice and Arena, 2018).In summary, phenotypic plasticity is the capability of a genotype to produce diverse phenotypic expressions under different environments.In fact, plants can react with changes in stomata structure and functionalities, chlorophyll content, typeof leaves, shoot elongation(Zunzunegui et al., 2009) or leaf morphology and structure (Radice and Arena, 2014).The objectivesof this work were i) describe the development of flower bud to mature fruit of H. edulisin the agro ecological conditions of the locality of Moreno(Buenos Airesprovince); ii) study of pollination methods; iii), evaluate the floral phenology evolution and iv) comparethe climatic conditions of Moreno (Buenos Airesprovince) with Federación (Entre Ríosprovince), which is the original place of the plants.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/jaeid-13261
Read Full Text: https://www.jaeid.it/index.php/jaeid/article/view/13261
