Structure–property characterization of the crinkle-leaf peach wood phenotype: a future model system for wood properties research?
| Authors: | Alex C. Wiedenhoeft, Rafael Arévalo, Craig Ledbetter, Joseph Jakes |
| Year: | 2016 |
| Type: | Scientific Journal |
| Station: | Forest Products Laboratory |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-016-2057-0 |
| Source: | JOM. 68(9): 2405-2412 |
Abstract
Nearly 400 million years of evolution and field-testing by the natural world has given humans thousands of wood types, each with unique structure– property relationships to study, exploit, and ideally, to manipulate, but the slow growth of trees makes them a recalcitrant experimental system. Variations in wood features of two genotypes of peach (Prunus persica L.) trees, wild-type and crinkle-leaf, were examined to elucidate the nature of weak wood in crinkle-leaf trees. Crinkle-leaf is a naturally-occurring mutation in which wood strength is altered in conjunction with an easily observed ‘crinkling’ of the leaves’ surface. Trees from three vigor classes (low growth rate, average growth rate, and high growth rate) of each genotype were sampled. No meaningful tendency of dissimilarities among the different vigor classes was found, nor any pattern in features in a genotype-by-vigor analysis. Wildtype trees exhibited longer vessels and fibers, wider rays, and slightly higher specific gravity. Neither cell wall mechanical properties measured with nanoindentation nor cell wall histochemical properties were statistically or observably different between crinkle-leaf and wild-type wood. The crinkle-leaf mutant has the potential to be a useful model system for wood properties investigation and manipulation if it can serve as a field-observable vegetative marker for altered wood properties.