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| Growth and Parasite Defense |
| Competition for Resources in Economic Plants from Forestry and Agronomy |
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(Interdisciplinary research cooperation funded through ,Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft' DFG /SFB 607)
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R. Matyssek / Speaker SFB 607
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Overview
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Although economic plants from forestry and agronomy have been shaped by man through plant breeding and may be grown under modified site conditions, they are exposed - similar to wild forms - to environmental impact and subject to common biological principles. In these latter respects, economic plants compete with neighboring individuals (within the boundaries of shoots and roots) for the available resources of a site, while competition for resources also occurs plant-internally through host/parasite and mycorrhizospheric relationships. These interactions confront plants by a dilemma: Internal resource allocation both to meet demands by growth processes and efficient competitiveness towards neighboring plants, and towards demands by parasite defense. This leads to testing the
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CENTRAL HYPOTHESIS:
Regardless of the kind of stress, plants regulate their resource allocation in a way that increase in stress tolerance (in particular defense against pathogens and phytophages) inherently leads to constraints on growth and competitiveness.
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In respect to this dilemma, the physiological control of resource allocation, namely between primary and secondary metabolism - and related to this, between the plant organs - plays a key role. The adjustments resulting from this regulation determine, through structural and physiological plant differentiation, both the capacities for further uptake of external resources and for parasite defense. This regulation constitutes the common underlying, functional basis both of competitiveness towards neighbors and predisposition to parasite attack - and thus, represents an expression of individual plant fitness. The mechanisms of this regulation are being analyzed through biochemical and molecular as well as eco-physiological methods, and are being scaled by means of modeling and applied approaches towards the stand level.
The concept aims at clarifying the ,cost/benefit' relationships (i.e. efficiencies) of the control of resource allocation within and between economic plants as being exposed to biotic and abiotic impact. Findings are being examined for the extent of common underlying, biological rules, covering a wide range of plant life forms, ontogenetic stages and growth conditions from the areas of forestry, pomology, pasture management and agriculture. As a ,novum' at the national and international scale, working groups from the research fields of forestry, agronomy and biology, being integrated through 22 projects into an interdisciplinary research concept, jointly pursue the clarification of the outlined basic research questions in applied biology. The research is conducted in the area of Munich under controlled laboratory and actual site conditions and is concentrated at the Campus of Freising-Weihenstephan The program aims at clarifying mechanisms of individual plant fitness as a prerequisite for lowering operational risks and energy input towards a more sustainable management of economic plant systems.
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