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Allelopathic effects of switchgrass on redroot pigweed and crabgrass growth

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Abstract

Non-native invasive plant species influence plant community composition and competitively eradicate native species. However, there is doubt regarding how global invasive species increase and explosively interfere with native plants. Invasive plants always have strong allelopathic potential. In this study, allelopathic effects of switchgrass on redroot pigweed and crabgrass growth were investigated by field and laboratory experiments. Within a 0.4-m distance of switchgrass, density and shoot biomass of native species were significantly suppressed in the field, with 95.1% and 93.0% inhibition on density of redroot pigweed and crabgrass and with 99.0% and 97.7% inhibition on shoot biomass, respectively, during the third growing season. Significant inhibitory effects on shoot and root biomass were observed at the 5:5 (switchgrass–native species) proportion in glass bottles, by 41.57% and 51.21% for shoot and root biomass of redroot pigweed and by 33.42% and 56.95% for shoot and root biomass of crabgrass, respectively. Results of a glass bottle experiment showed that shoot and root biomass of redroot pigweed and crabgrass could be significantly inhibited by contact with switchgrass root. Results of a Petri dish experiment showed that aqueous extracts of switchgrass significantly inhibited germination process of both species at high concentrations, with 90.74% and 18.62% inhibition on germination rate and plumule length of redroot pigweed and with 63.59%, 16.38%, and 19.92% inhibition on germination rate, plumule, and radicle lengths of crabgrass, respectively, at the concentration of 0.1 g·mL−1. This report demonstrated that switchgrass had allelopathic effects on redroot pigweed and crabgrass growth.

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We declare that materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any scientist wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes, without breaching participant confidentiality.

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No previously unreported software application or custom code was described in our manuscript.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Scientific and Technological Innovation Special Funds of Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry (KJCX20200210 and KJCX20180707), Ministry of Science and Technology of P. R. China (Grant No. 2019ZX09301-114), and SINOPEC Research and Development Program (Grant No. 217015-6). We thank Mallory Eckstut, PhD, from Liwen Bianji, Edanz Editing China (www.liwenbianji.cn/ac), for editing the English text of a draft of this manuscript.

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Correspondence to Juying Wu or Xincun Hou.

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Communicated by Chuihua Kong.

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Li, A., Zheng, R., Tian, L. et al. Allelopathic effects of switchgrass on redroot pigweed and crabgrass growth. Plant Ecol 222, 1–12 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-020-01083-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-020-01083-4

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