Phenological development of barnyard grass plants originated from different geographical locations

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.Protection, Mustafa Kemal University, Antakya, Turkey; 10School of Agriculture, Policy andDevelopment, University of Reading, Reading, UK; 11 Department of Plant Physiology,Genetics and Biotechnology, University of Warmia and Mazury, Olsztyn, Poland; 13Dept.Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy;11Division for Biotechnology and Plant Health, Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research(NIBIO), Ås, Norway.Author contributions:Jevgenija Necajeva - Investigation, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing - original draft,Writing - review & editingAritz Royo-Esnal - Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing - review &editingDonato Loddo - Methodology, Investigation, Writing - review & editingPeter Kryger Jensen - Investigation, Writing - review & editingAlireza Taab - Methodology, Investigation, Writing - review & editingAgnieszka Synowiec- Investigation, Writing - review & editingAhmet Uludag - Methodology, Investigation, Writing - review & editingIlhan Uremis - Investigation, Writing - review & editingAlistair Murdoch - Methodology, Writing - review & editingAnna Bochenek - Investigation,Andrea Onofri - Formal analysis, Writing - review & editingKirsten S. Tørresen - Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing - review &editingABSTRACTBarnyard grass (Echinochloa crus-galli (L.) Beauv) is a competitive C4 weed species that iswidely distributed throughout the world. While it originated in warm climatic conditions,currently it is found in Europe as far north as Norway. This study aimed to compare thephenological development of plants from different climatic conditions in varyingenvironmental conditions. To represent the contrasting climatic conditions within Europe,seeds were collected in Norway and Italy and distributed to the study participants to be sownat 10 different sites as two common populations. In addition to that, seeds of two to threelocal populations were collected near each of the sites. The development of the plants wasmonitored in a pot experiment set up under field conditions. The time to reach heading in thefirst year of the experiment was 77.6% faster (on average, ranging from 45.9 to 98.3%) in theNorwegian than in the Italian population. However, in the leaf development stage, thedifference between the common populations was smaller, on average 23.5% (0-46.7%) andmostly not significant. Our results indicate that different E. crus-galli ecotypes, characterizedby differences in phenological development, evolved within the distribution area of thisspecies in Europe. However, the early development of the plants progresses with negligibledifferences between populations. The findings reported here can be used to adapt existingmodels from one region to regions with different climatic conditions for use in decisionsupport systems and for research of the plant population dynamics