Abstract

Embotrium coccineum (Notro), shade-intolerant pioneer plant capable of colonizing exposed areas and successfully grow in soils with low nutrient availability. It is characterized by a special type of root adaptation called Cluster Roots (CRs), which exude organic compounds that improve the acquisition of nutrients from the soil. It has been reported that the formation of CRs increases with phosphorus (P) deficiency. However, there is still no clarity on the effect of nitrogen (N) or the co-limitation of P and N in their training. Due of its wide geographical distribution, we wonder if the answer to the variation of P and N is equal in different populations. For this, we compared morphological responses of populations of Puerto Montt (PM) and Punta Arenas (PA) maintained in hydroponics with different nutritional conditions. Moreover, a search for genes involved in the assimilation of these nutrients is performed. The morphological responses to nutritional limitation are different between the two populations: 1) Biomass and height seedling PA was similar between nutritional treatments evaluated, unlike PM. 2) The formation of CRs in PA was inversely proportional to the availability of P and N, contrary to PM where it was constant. We conclude that the answers to nutritional treatments vary according to the population. In addition, we studied genes involved in the response to N and P deficiency (AFB3, PHT1 and TIR1) and hope that the detection of them allows us to better understand the molecular mechanisms associated with the differential morphological responses