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Abstract
The distal zone of one-year-old apple (Malus domestica) shoots was studied on five cultivars for bud size and composition (number of appendages) and hydraulic conductance before bud burst. Our hypothesis was that bud development was related to hydraulic conductance of the sap pathway to the bud independent of an acrotonic (proximal vs. distal) effect.
Bud size and composition, and hydraulic conductance, were highly variable for all cultivars. A positive correlation was demonstrated between both the number of cataphylls and green-leaf primordia and hydraulic conductance. Cultivar and bud size affected the intercept of these relationships more than the slope suggesting similar scaling between these variables but different hydraulic efficiencies. A great proportion of small buds were also characterized by null values of hydraulic conductance.
Our study suggests that hydraulicly-mediated competitions exist between adjacent buds within a same branching zone prefiguring the variability of lateral types in the following growing season. It is hypothesized that this developmental patterning is driven by hydraulic characteristics of the whole-metamer, including the subtending leaf, during bud development.