Project information
Project manager
Anna Monrad Jense
Other project members
Helle Jakobe Martens, University of Copenhagen
Participating organizations
Linnaeus University, University of Copenhagen
Financier
The Bridge
Timetable
2020-2026
Subject
Forestry and wood technology (Department of Forestry and Wood Technology, Faculty of Technology)
Research group
The Bridge
Linnaeus Knowledge Environment
Green Sustainable Development
More about the project
Acorn size is an important phenotypic trait commonly associated with the overall fitness of young seedlings. However, determining the actual plant-available resources provided by the acorn is difficult.
We utilise a one-of-a-kind natural mutation that has created a population of achlorophyllous oaks, plants without chlorophyll, to quantify the plant-available carbon of the acorns. The achlorophyllous oak population was discovered in spring 2022 in an 80-year-old Q. robur forest in southern Sweden.
In the project, we tracked growth and survival from germination until all achlorophyllous seedlings (white oaks) had died. Interestingly, the achlorophyllous oaks survived almost a year on the acorn resources, whereas 76% of the normal green oaks survived the first year. The photosynthetic capacity was stable over the summer for both the green oaks and the white oaks – but for the white oaks, we were unable at any time to detect any carbon uptake.
We are now looking into exactly how and how much of the acorn resources the oaks can maximally access and how much they use under different growth conditions.
