A dose-response relationship for marketable yield reduction of two lettuce ( Lactuca sativa L.) cultivars exposed to tropospheric ozone in Southern Europe

Abstract

The present study investigated the response to ozone (O₃) of two cultivars (cv.'Romana' and cv. 'Canasta') of irrigated lettuce grown in an open-top chamber (OTC) experiment in Mediterranean conditions. Two different levels of O₃ were applied, ambient O₃ in non-filtered OTCs (NF-OTCs) and −40% of ambient O₃ in charcoal-filtered OTCs (CF-OTCs), during four consecutive growing cycles. At the end of each growing cycle, the marketable yield (fresh biomass) was assessed while during the growing periods, measurements of the stomatal conductance at leaf level were performed and used to define a stomatal conductance model for calculation of the phytotoxic ozone dose (POD) absorbed by the plants.

Results showed that O₃ caused statistically significant yield reductions in the first and in the last growing cycle. In general, the marketable yield of the NF-OTC plants was always lower than the CF-OTC plants for both cultivars, with mean reductions of −18.5 and −14.5% for 'Romana' and 'Canasta', respectively. On the contrary, there was no statistically significant difference in marketable yield due to the cultivar factor or to the interaction between O₃ and cultivar in any of the growing cycle performed.

Dose-response relationships for the marketable relative yield based on the POD values were calculated according to different flux threshold values (Y). The best regression fit was obtained using an instantaneous flux threshold of 6 nmol O₃ m⁻² s⁻¹ (POD₆); the same value was obtained also for other crops. According to the generic lettuce dose-response relationship, an O₃ critical level of 1 mmol O₃ m⁻² of POD₆ for a 15% of marketable yield loss was found.

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