Ting  Zhang ¹ , Ping  Li ² , Jiali  Wei ²

1 Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Sustainable Plant Innovation, Shanghai Botanical Garden, Shanghai, 200231, China
2 Shanghai Key Lab of Bio-energy Crops, College of Life Science, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China
Author    Correspondence author
Molecular Plant Breeding, 2025, Vol. 16, No. 1   doi: 10.5376/mpb.2025.16.0005
Received: 25 Dec., 2024    Accepted: 30 Jan., 2025    Published: 08 Feb., 2025

Zhang T., Li P., and Wei J.L., 2025, Physiological responses of four Hedera plants to high temperature tolerance, Molecular Plant Breeding, 16(1): 44-54 (doi: 10.5376/mpb.2025.16.0005)

Ivy is an important horticulture plant for three-dimensional urban greening, and heat stress is one of the important environmental factors limiting the normal growth of ivy. Studying the physiological response of ivy to high temperature stress will be of great significance for screening suitable varieties of ivy and increasing the diversity of urban three-dimensional greening landscape. Two-year cutting seedlings of four ivy varieties were cultured in an artificial climate incubator (20 ℃, 16 h light / 8 h dark) for two weeks, and then treated at 40 ℃ for 7 days. The morphological changes and physiological indexes, such as heat injury index, chlorophyll content, chlorophyll fluorescence parameters, MAD, proline content, CAT activity and SOD activity, were recorded at 0, 1, 3, 5 and 7 days. The heat resistance and heat resistance mechanism of the test materials were comprehensively evaluated through the membership function method. The results showed that the heat resistance of the four ivy species was ‘Sark’>‘Ingelise’>‘Wonder’>‘Golden Ivalace’. The chlorophyll content, maximum photochemical quantum yield (F_v/F_m) and apparent quantum transfer efficiency (ETR) of the four ivy species decreased with the increase of heat stress duration. While the content of MDA continued to increase, and the increase of MDA in heat tolerant varieties was smaller than that in heat sensitive varieties. However, the proline content, CAT activity and SOD activity increased first and then decreased. The peak value of proline content in heat tolerant varieties was later than that in heat sensitive varieties, and the SOD and CAT activities in heat tolerant varieties were significantly higher than those in heat sensitive varieties (P<0.05).

Hedera; Heat stress; Physiological indicators; Heat resistance; Membership function