Velisevich S. N., Popov A. V., Goroshkevich S. N. Crown Structure of Vegetative Progeny of Young and Mature Generative Trees of the Siberian Stone Pine

DOI: 10.15372/SJFS20180606

© Velisevich S. N., Popov A. V., Goroshkevich S. N., 2018

The study was performed on 25-year-old grafted progeny of young and mature generative trees of the Siberian stone pine Pinus sibirica Du Tour. The Siberian stone pine forests in the south of Western Siberia. grafted on a young tree stock, the influence of the age of the mother tree on the vegetative and generative crown structure of the grafters and the degree of epigenetic inheritance of age- specific features of morphogenesis were studied. The analysis of the results showed that the differences between the grafting of young and mature trees according to the generative structure of the crown are expressed by an order less than in the vegetative structure. Ontogenetically, older grafts of mature trees with smaller crown sizes were superior to those of young trees due to the efficiency of generative processes in terms of the unit volume of the crown. According to the level of growth, which was estimated by the size of the stem and crown, they were significantly inferior to the grafts of young trees. The most interesting result is a noticeable difference in branching between the two groups of trees. The grafts of young trees were branched in accord with older axesformed mainly from the buds of regular renewal, due to which the total number of shoots in the crown increased substantially and, as a result, its density increased threefold. The share of latent buds in the grafts of mature trees increased substantially, and branching was developing mainly due to the first and second branching axes; as a result, the crowns of the grafting of mature trees visually resembled separate branches from the upper parts of the crown of ontogenetically old trees The results obtained imply that in the vegetative progeny of trees of a different ontogenetic state, the growth potential is primarily epigenetically inherited. Qualitative transformations in morphogenesis, including sexual reproduction, should be considered as secondary phenomena, as markers of epigenetic inheritance of growth potential.