The Effect of Climate Change, CO2 and Light on the Growth of Eruca sativa

Introduction

With growing populations and demand for food, the efficient growth of crops is essential to
feed the approximate billion malnourished people on Earth (Foley et al. 2011). Additionally,
decreased areas of arable land due to climate change will put strain on agricultural supplies
requiring further increases in production efficiency (Takle et al., 2013). One of the largest
effects of climate change on plant growth is increased growth due to increased levels of CO2
allowing increased rate of photosynthesis (Ainsworth et al. 2002). Plant growth is, however,
not solely regulated by increases and decreases in single factors but rather controlled by
feedback mechanisms between sources and sinks (White et al., 2016). While the effects of
climate change in increasing CO2 levels will have a beneficial impact on plant growth,
increases in atmospheric pollutants associated with climate change also damage plant
structures and destroy chlorophyll -essentially reducing the light intake- required for
photosynthesis and promotion of growth (Giri et al., 2013).

High light levels are very important in managing efficient plant growth (Hernandez et al.
2019) and promote protein production required for growth (Shang et al. 2018), and so it is
expected that the damage to chlorophyll cells will restrict growth under heightened CO2
conditions. There has been a depth of research into the effects of climate change on plant
growth indicating that responses to conditions of climate change are specific to plant
functional groups and individual structural responses (Gillison, 2019, Ensslin et al., 2017).

There has been little study into growth response of the Eruca sativa (garden rocket), which
holds great economic importance due to its valuable traits for mass production, including
resistance to salt and drought (Wang et al., 2014). This study thus aims to understand the
response of Eruca sativa to changing climatic conditions to provide useful information on the
growth of the plant or crossbreeds in future agricultural settings. This study is centrally based
on the agricultural growth of Eruca sativa, and thus this analysis is divided into two sections;
examination of the effects of high CO2 (1000ppm) and ambient CO2 (400ppm) in low light
(200 μmol m-2s-1) conditions to demonstrate the response of the plant to expected conditions
of climate change, and examination of the effects of high light (800 μmol m-2s-1) and low
light at high CO2 concentrations to see how the plant grows in optimised growth conditions.

Plant responses to changes in CO2 and light levels are generally specific to individual plant
species, and thus it is difficult to hypothesise the exact levels of light and CO2 that will

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 promote optimal growth. This study hypothesises that under the conditions of high CO2 and
low light there will be no significant increase in leaf surface area compared to plants with low
CO2 and low light, as light is required to drive the growth processes through photosynthesis.
Photosynthesis is essential for using the excess carbon provided in the high CO2 condition,
and without the higher light levels to power the photosynthesis process this reaction will not
be able to progress any faster or on a larger scale. Plants which get high light levels and high
CO2 levels will then grow significantly more than plants with high CO2 and only low light
levels as these low light levels, used to reflect the chlorophyll damage caused by pollutants,
will reduce photosynthetic rates greatly.

Results

40

35

30

25
Leaf Area (cm2)

20

15

10

0
Ambient CO2, Low Light Elevated CO2, Low Light

Figure 1 – Average leaf sizes in low light conditions, comparing ambient and elevated CO2 levels
There was no significant difference between the total average plant growth of plants in
elevated and ambient CO2 levels, examined through student’s t-test (t = 1.147733639, df =
198, p = 0.252463391). The average total leaf size in plants from the elevated CO2 group is
33.4cm2, while the plants in the ambient CO2 group had an average total leaf size of 31.8cm3.

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 60

50

40
Leaf Area (cm2)

30

20

10

0
High Light, Elevated CO2 Low Light, Elevated CO2

Figure 2 – Average leaf sizes in elevated CO2 conditions, comparing high and low light levels
Plants grown in high light and CO2 conditions had significantly higher leaf surface area
compared to plants grown in low light levels (t = 5.991799485, df = 198, p = 9.64547 x 10-
09
). This was an increase of 15.3cm2 (31.44%) when the light level was increased.

Discussion

The results of this study correspond with both hypothesises surrounding differences in light
and CO2 levels. As predicted, when CO2 is increased independent of light levels there is no
significant increase in leaf surface area (Figure 1). These results have been widely
demonstrated in other studies of other plant species’ responses to solely increased CO2,
however this study is the first of such to examine this interaction in Eruca sativa. As
demonstrated through meta-analysis of 170 studies into the chemical and growth responses of
plants to increased CO2 concentration by Robinson, Ryan and Newman (2012), CO2 does not
by itself have any significant impact on plant growth, as measured in leaf weight and specific
leaf area.

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In another meta-analytic study by Ainsworth et al. (2002), it was demonstrated that soybean
crops are significantly affected in their growth by increased CO2 levels however this also
further supports this study’s hypothesis. As soybeans are legumes, they are able to fix
nitrogen content from the atmosphere (Kuypers, Marchant and Kartal, 2018) which alongside
the increased CO2 is able to stimulate increases in photosynthetic rate. Plants without these
nitrogen sources such as Eruca sativa do not increase in photosynthetic rate simply due to
increases in CO2 concentration available to the plant and thus their growth is not affected by
increasing CO2 concentration alone (Ainsworth et al., 2002).

The hypothesis that the response of Eruca sativa to heightened CO2 is mediated by the ability
of the plant to drive photosynthesis is further supported by the second set of results from this
study, which demonstrate that increasing light alongside CO2 levels causes the plant to grow
significantly more than solely increased CO2 levels (Figure 2). Light levels on their own do
increase the growth of Eruca sativa to some extent as demonstrated by the research of Chun
and Kim (2017), who compared the effects of different light sources on the growth of the
plant. However, these responses are much smaller than the response seen in conditions of
increased light and CO2.

These results are not completely conclusive, and there is distinctly room for future trials and
studies into the response of Eruca sativa to changing climatic conditions. Due to issues with
controlling the environmental conditions, especially controlling the changes in CO2
concentration, the plants were growth in small pots throughout the study. While this was
necessary to control the conditions with the available resources, the restriction of root growth
can restrict nitrogen uptake (Ainsworth et al., 2002), especially in plants which cannot fix
nitrogen from the atmosphere. This lowered N content has a significant effect on the growth
of plants, and this effect differs between low and high light levels, as demonstrated by
Hernández et al., 2019, who studied N effects on the growth of tomato (which also cannot fix
N content). As this effect is not symmetrically applied to plants in both conditions it has the
capacity to alter the results of this study, and thus further research into this area should either
investigate this response specifically in Eruca sativa or use large plots which do not restrict
roots.

Additionally, this study used decreased light to simulate the effects of damage to chlorophyll
in plants, as both reduce the plants ability to photosynthesise. While the effect of pollution on
damaging chlorophyll is documented in previous literature (Tripathi and Gautam, 2007, Giri

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et al., 2013), there is the possibility that either damage to chlorophyll or the change in light
levels have effects which the other condition does not. This does reduce the accuracy of this
report’s analysis on the effects of climate change somewhat however it only concerns light
levels and most likely does not have any effect at all. There is still room for future analysis of
the correlation in effects between decreased light levels and chlorophyll levels, or future
studies could instead directly alter the chlorophyll levels of the plants which are studied.

The method of measurement of the plants growth could also have some impact on the
accuracy of this study. Leaf surface area was measured as the easiest indicator of plant
growth, as this is what agricultural optimisation of Eruca sativa growth aims for. Previous
meta-analytic studies have shown that plants produce a ‘functional-equilibrium’ response to
changes in some conditions, which would lead to parts of the plant below ground growing in
conditions of lowered CO2 or light (Poorter et al., 2011). These interactions were shown to
significantly change plant growth when nutrients were restricted, and thus most likely would
not affect this study’s results though future research demonstrate distinct responses due to
lack of CO2 or light which would require the findings of this study to be re-examined.

This study can thus conclude that in response to climate change, Eruca sativa will not display
any difference in growth, however its growth could be greatly optimised by increasing light
availability. From these results there is a necessity for future analysis of other aspects of
climate change affecting the nutrition of Eruca sativa, centrally the effects of nitrogen
content it how it effects the mechanics of growth.

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