Seed germination of Opuntia dejecta, a non-desert cactus native to Central America

Abstract

Opuntia species from arid and semiarid environments have dormant seeds. The objective of this study was to evaluate how the soil influences seed germination of the cactus O. dejecta. We hypothesized that O. dejecta seeds in the basaltic rocky soil will show lower seed germination than seeds in a site with alluvial soil from the coastal plain. An experiment of partial reciprocal transplant was performed, placing seeds from basaltic soil (San Ignacio population) in pots containing alluvial soil from Puente Nacional population and in slabs from basaltic soil, and placing them on two greenhouses, in San Ignacio population and Puente Nacional population. We found that seed germination (%) was lower in San Ignacio site (with basaltic soil) than in Puente Nacional site (with alluvial soil), and that alluvial soil showed higher seed germination than basaltic soil, as well as higher seed germination in Puente Nacional than in San Ignacio. The results suggest that seed dormancy for the population situated in the rocky condition is a trait locally adapted, and the basaltic soil can be considered as a selection factor.

Interpopulation variation in seed germination and seed traits of Opuntia streptacantha

“…In addition, Opuntia spp. seeds collected in moist areas were bigger than those from drier ones, and there was a correlation of seed mass with seed germination only for O. jaliscana (Romo-Campos et al, 2010). This correlation has not been found in other Opuntia spp.…”

“…Several Opuntia species have widespread geographic distribution (e.g., O. streptacantha); however, the effect of the sites on their seeds has been few studied. For some Opuntia species, a higher seed germination for seeds from warmer than for those from dryer areas has been reported by Romo-Campos et al (2010).…”

“…The differences in seed mass have been found between cactus species and localities (Barrios et al, 2020). Romo-Campos et al (2010) found that Opuntia ssp. seeds collected in humid areas were heavier than those collected in dry sites and our results confirm these findings, as seeds from wetter sites showed the highest volumetric weight, likewise, seeds from dry sites such as Cardonal showed the lowest seed weight (1.…”

“…This correlation has not been found in other Opuntia spp. (Romo-Campos et al, 2010), nor in genera such as Astrophytum, Echinocactus, Ariocarpus and Turbinicarpus (Rojas-Aréchiga et al, 2013), as well as Cereus, Cleistocactus, Echinopsis, Gymnocalycium, Harrisia, Parodia and Stetsonia (Sosa-Pivatto et al, 2014). However, with higher seed mass there is lower dependence to light to germinate (Flores et al 2011(Flores et al , 2016.…”

Advances on polysaccharides from cactus: analysis and review based on bibliometrics

“…Cactus is the common name of the species belong to family Cactaceae, comprising about 127 genera with 1750 known species. Cactus is native to tropical and subtropical arid regions of North and South America and is now found in temperate regions of the world, especially in Mexico, where it is most abundant and commonly cultivated as a nutritious food (Delgado-Ramírez et al, 2021;Mitchell, 2021;Pensamiento-Niño et al, 2021;Matus et al, 2022).…”