Extensive sucrose cycling through the fructan pool of a C3 grass across a 200 to 800 μmol mol−1 atmospheric CO2 gradient
Jianjun Zhu, Christoph A Lehmeier, Ulrike Ostler, Regina T Hirl, Juan C Baca Cabrera, Rudi Schäufele, Fernando A Lattanzi, Hans Schnyder · 2026
Read Extensive sucrose cycling through the fructan pool of a C3 grass across a 200 to 800 μmol mol−1 atmospheric CO2 gradient by Jianjun Zhu, Christoph A Lehmeier, Ulrike Ostler, Regina T Hirl, Juan C Baca Cabrera, Rudi Schäufele, Fernando A Lattanzi, Hans Schnyder (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13525200.txt.
Description
Zhu and colleagues study how stored sugars buffer a grass against changing carbon dioxide levels. Their 2026 paper grows perennial ryegrass at three carbon dioxide concentrations spanning past to projected future air. Fructans, the plant's main reserve carbohydrates, feed regrowth, but how carbon dioxide affects their role in balancing supply and demand was unclear.
After labelling 66-day-old plants with carbon-13 for a week, the team modelled flows through sucrose, fructan, glucose, and fructose pools. Raising carbon dioxide increased shoot mass about 1.6-fold and lifted the fructan share of dry weight from 35 to 50 percent. Turnover speeds of the pools barely changed, yet carbon stayed in the system longer. Rebuilt sucrose from fructan breakdown matched or exceeded new sucrose production at high carbon dioxide.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Jianjun Zhu, Christoph A Lehmeier, Ulrike Ostler, Regina T Hirl, Juan C Baca Cabrera, Rudi Schäufele, Fernando A Lattanzi, Hans Schnyder |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 71 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |