Summary• We examined the relationships among productivity, water use efficiency ( WUE) and drought tolerance in 29 genotypes of Populus × euramericana ( Populus deltoides × Populus nigra ), and investigated whether some leaf traits could be used as predictors for productivity, WUE and drought tolerance.• At Orléans, France, drought was induced on one field plot by withholding water, while a second plot remained irrigated and was used as a control. Recorded variables included stem traits (e.g. biomass) and leaf structural (e.g. leaf area) and functional traits [e.g. intrinsic water use efficiency ( W i ) and carbon isotope discrimination ( ∆ )].• Productivity and ∆ displayed large genotypic variability and were not correlated. ∆ scaled negatively with W i and positively with stomatal conductance under moderate drought, suggesting that the diversity for ∆ was mainly driven by stomatal conductance.• Most of the productive genotypes displayed a low level of drought tolerance (i.e. a large reduction of biomass), while the less productive genotypes presented a large range of drought tolerance. The ability to increase WUE in response to water deficit was necessary but not sufficient to explain the genotypic diversity of drought tolerance.

Overall, the results suggest that cavitation resistance is a causal factor of tree mortality under extreme drought conditions.

Summary• Here we tested whether some leaf traits could be used as predictors for productivity in a range of Populus deltoides × P. nigra clones. These traits were assessed in 3-yr-old rooted cuttings from 29 clones growing in an open field trial, in a five randomized complete block design, under optimal irrigation.• Variables were assigned to four groups describing productivity (above-ground biomass, total leaf area), leaf growth (total number of leaves increment rate), leaf structure (area of the largest leaf, specific leaf area, carbon and nitrogen contents), and carbon isotope discrimination in the leaves ( ∆ ).• High-yielding clones displayed larger total leaf area and individual leaf area, while no correlation could be detected between productivity and either leaf structure or ∆ . By contrast, ∆ was negatively correlated with number of leaves increment rate and leaf N content.• Our study shows that there is a potential to improve water-use efficiency in poplar without necessarily reducing the overall productivity. IntroductionPoplars are among the fastest growing trees under temperate latitudes. Their large productivity is associated with large water requirements and, as a consequence, a tight dependency of productivity upon water availability (Ceulemans et al ., 1988;Tschaplinski & Blake, 1989;Barigah et al ., 1994;Tschaplinski et al ., 1994;Zsuffa et al ., 1996). To sustain the extension of poplar cultivation from flood plains and bottomlands towards uplands where soil water availability is subjected to seasonal changes, more water-use efficient hybrids are required. One functional trait that could be of interest as an index for improved or maintained productivity under reduced water availability is the intrinsic water-use efficiency (Wi), i.e. the ratio between net CO 2 assimilation and stomatal conductance. Wi can be indirectly estimated at leaf level, via the carbon isotope discrimination ( ∆ ), assuming the occurrence of a linear and negative correlation between ∆ and intrinsic water-use efficiency shown both for cereals (Farquhar & Richards, 1984;Farquhar et al ., 1989) and for trees (Ponton et al ., 2001). This trait is easily measurable, highly heritable and has been used as a selection criterion in crop breeding Rebetzke et al ., 2002). Among tree species, it also displays a high heritability (Brendel et al ., 2002) and a large variability at interspecific level (Guehl et al ., 1998;Bonal et al ., 2000;Ponton et al ., 2001) and provenance level (Lauteri et al ., 1997;Roupsard et al ., 1998) as well as at family level (Brendel et al ., 2002). Such a clonal diversity of ∆ has already been shown to occur among poplars (Zhang et al ., 2004;Marron et al ., 2005). The detection of clones combining satisfactory productivity and high