Allelopathy contributes to competition between plants and has potential use for weed suppression in agriculture.  A co-cultivation system for Arabidopsis thaliana and Trifolium repens was used to study allelopathic effects.  Plants were cultivated for up to two weeks to provide a timeline. Growth was modeled using Gompertz curves, and including the co-cultivation factor significantly affected the model (for Arabidopsis, P < 0.001; Trifolium, P < 0.05).  Harvested plants were extracted and analyzed by GC-TOF-MS. In total 163 metabolites were identified using the online database BinBase.  Co-cultivation altered the metabolic profile of both species. Overall 34 A. thaliana metabolites increased while 54 decreased and in T. repens 20 increased while 33 decreased.  To our knowledge, no in vitro allelopathic studies have used untargeted library-based metabolomics.  The decreases in A. thaliana of aromatic and branched-chain amino acids suggest a herbicide-like suppressant effect by T. repens because of the similarity with effects expected from glyphosate or sulfonylurea herbicide treatment.

Metabolic response of <i>Arabidopsis</i> to co-cultivation with white clover (<i>Trifolium repens</i> L.)  suggests a herbicide-like mode of action

244th National Meeting (2012)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.

Metabolic response of Arabidopsis to co-cultivation with white clover (Trifolium repens L.) suggests a herbicide-like mode of action