This preprint is recommended after a round of reviews by two external reviewers and the recommender and a careful revision of the initial text. The revision addressed all the the concerns raised by the reviewers and myself acting as recommender. I commend the authors for the care taken in the revision process and in addressing all concerns raised by the referees. The preprint is now in a status anabling a very positive recommendation, and I am convinced that PCI friendly journals will be keen to publish it given the quality of the contribution to Forest Pathology and Epidemiology as well as to and Forest Ecology.

Indeed, the preprint adresses an important topic in forest ecology and forest management. Powdery mildew (due to a complex of fungi species of Erysiphe spp.) is a very frequent pathogen affecting oaks and mainly English oak (Quercus robur L.),  a widespread species in Western European forests which bears great ecological and economic interests (see Marçais and Desprez-Loustau, 2014, for a review). Young regenerations are mostly affected by the disease, which infects young, unfoldling leaves and leads to severe reductions in photosynthesis (Hajji et al, 2009) and in some cases to tree dieback in young regenerations, and sometimes in older trees in the case of repeated infestations over several years, or combinations with defoliaitions by processionnary moths (Thaumetopoea processionea L.). Powdery mildew was introduced to Europe at the beginning of the 20th century and caused initially very severe damage in oak stands; currently, damage is much less prevalent, probably due to a co-evolution of the oak host and the pathogen (Desprez-Loustau and Marçais, 2019).

The present investigation adds very interesting and important information to our current knowledge of this disease, and addresses in particular the genetic variability of susceptibility to the disease among oak families and the effect of the disease on the survival of seedlings in the long run. Five main research questions were addressed: i. How does powdery mildew affect juvenile survival; ii. Is the survival rate differing among oak families? iii. Does powdery mildew infection reduce the differences of fitness among oak families? iv. Does powdery mildew impact the genetic diversity of oak populations? v. Are there significant genetic associations between some genetic loci and seedling survival? These questions are important for unerstanding the evolution of a pathosystem like the powdery mildew/English oak system and for explaining the past dynamics of this pathosystem, which resulted in a dicrease in virulence of the disease since its introduction in Europe.

The preprint reports results from a very original and solid experimental design based on the cultivation in the field of 15 oak progenies comprising 1733 indivduals over a quite long time span (9 years) and recurrent observations of growth, survival, infection intensity, ... A control group was protected against the pathogen by application of a fungicide. Moreover, a large number of individuals were genotyped, using single nucleatide polymorphism (SNP) allowing the detection of some candidate loci, and preparing future genome-wide association studies. The results are quite clear, and add very important elements to our understaning of this interesting and evolving pathosystem present in mots of the western European oak forests. 

This preprint is of particular interest since such approaches, which are becoming common in cultivated crops, have only seldom been applied to natural pathosystems despite their importance for the dynamics of forest ecosystems under the increasing impact of climate change. In brief, this is an important preprint that brings a large set of new data and addresses the urgent question of epidemiology of diseases in forest ecosystems.

References

Barrès B, Dutech C, Saint-Jean G, Bodénès C, Burban C, Fiévet V, Lepoittevin C, Garnier-Géré P, Desprez-Loustau M-L (2024) Demographic and genetic impacts of powdery mildew in a young oak cohort. bioRxiv, 2023.06.22.546164, ver. 2 peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Forest and Wood Science. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.06.22.546164

Desprez-Loustau ML, Hamelin FM, Marçais B (2019) The ecological and evolutiionary trajectory of oak powdery mildew in Europe. In: Wilson K, Fenton A, Tompkins D, Wildlife Disease Ecology: Linking Theory to Data and Application. Ecological Reviews. Cambridge University Press, 978-1-107-13656-4.
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316479964.015
 
Hajji M, Dreyer E, Marçais B. (2009) Impact pf Erysiphe alphotoides on transpiration and photosynthesis in Quercus robur leaves. Eur J Plant Pathol, 125, 63-72, 
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10658-009-9458-7
 
Marçais B, Desprez-Loustau ML (2014) European oak powdery mildew: impact on trees, effects of environmental factors, and potential effects of climate change. Ann For Sci, 71, 633-642, 
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13595-012-0252-x

This interesting article (van Rooij et al, 2023) proposes an innovative modelling approach to the question of the biomechanics of a growing branch. The main aim is to model the “growth stress” (Fournier et al, 2013) it is exposed to while developing its radial structure in response to increasing weight. The proposed model is very interesting and novel with respect to the existing literature on this important topic in tree biology. The model bases on two major components of the structure of a growing branch: the eccentricity (the branch is usually thicker vertically than horizontally, which may provide the strength to resist the weight) and the production of reaction wood (Barnett et al, 2014) on one side of the branch which produces asymmetric forces against gravity. The reaction wood is either tension wood (in hardwood trees, e.g., angiosperms) or compression wood (in softwood trees, e.g., gymnosperms). The model is clearly described and based on a number of explicit and already described concepts with some simplifications (no local irregularities like nodes or holes, only vertical bending taken into account, branch growing straight at a constant angle, …) whose potential effects are nicely discussed and on a reliable and detailed set of analytical equations. The model addresses the dynamic changes resulting from branch growth, i.e., mainly radial growth which results in an accumulation of wood and in increasing mass and “growth stress”.

The model is tested during a virtual experiment using a small set of data from a large pine tree (taken as an example of a softwood conifer tree) and a cherry tree (taken as an example of a hardwood tree). The optimisation test uses the mean allometric values from 30 branches of each individual tree as an entry to the model. This test of the optimality of the model is a very useful prerequisite for the adoption of the model. One might however argue that some replicate examples from other tree species would have been welcome to better represent the potential inter-specific variability in the two groups (softwoods vs. hardwoods). Indeed, there is a lack of suitable data available to properly test the underlying hypotheses under different conditions (growth angles, wood densities, growth rate, branch aging, ….). However, the presented computations allow testing the plausibility of the model and of its main conclusions, with respect to some “growth stress” values reported in the literature. The results confirm that the contribution of reaction wood is dominant, even if the eccentricity of the branches bears a significant contribution in the two tested cases.

The present preprint has the potential to act as the foundation for some additional research that might challenge its main conclusions and provide (hopefully) more support to the main conclusion that eccentricity plays a minor but still significant role in ensuring the stability of the growing branches and that the main stabilising effects are produced by reaction wood. 

This version of the preprint is now suitable for a recommendation. However, it still suffers a few minor typos and language issues that the authors might correct during further steps in the publication process (a final version as a preprint, or submission to a journal chosen by the authors). Among those typos, the fact that Prunus avium is a cherry tree and not a birch. Similarly, several references need be corrected and completed, and more care should be in general given to the scientific species names….

In conclusion, this modelling exercise and the optimisation procedure used here underline once more the importance of reaction wood as a stabiliser of the three-dimensional architecture of trees not only in the trunk (where it has been studied in detail), but also in the lateral and sometimes quite heavy branches.

Anyway, I believe this preprint (and the version potentially published in a journal) will become an important reference for future research about the biomechanics of branches and of tree crowns in general, and that it will trigger further research in this direction.

REFERENCES

Arnoul van Rooij, Eric Badel, Jean-François Barczi, Yves Caraglio, Tancrede Almeras, and Joseph Gril. (2023) Modelling the growth stress in tree branches: eccentric growth vs. reaction wood. HAL, ver. 4 peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Forest and Wood Science. https://hal.science/hal-03748026v4 

Mériem Fournier, Jana Dlouha, Gaëlle Jaouen, Tancrède Almeras (2013). Integrative biomechanics for tree ecology: beyond wood density and strength. Journal of Experimental Botany, 60 (15), pp.4397-
4410. https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/ert279

J.R. Barnett, Joseph Gril, Pekka Saranpää (2014) Introduction, In: The Biology of Reaction Wood, Springer Series in Wood Science, Springer (pub), Gardiner B., Barnett J., Saranpää P., Gril J (eds), p. 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10814-3_1

Understanding the processes allowing trees to orientate their stems and branches requires an understanding of the mechanical properties of individual cells. As the cells are formed, maturation stresses are created that can lead to the reorientation of the tree. But measuring the properties within the different wood cells produced in normal wood, tension wood or compression wood requires measurements at very fine spatial resolution and the wood cells must remain in-situ so that the cell mechanical characteristics are preserved. In the article of Arnould et al (2022), measurements of the mechanical characteristics of poplar tension wood were measured in comparison to normal wood at different distances from the cambium and therefore different levels of maturation. The work required incredible care to embed the wood in resin, to cut the wood with extremely sharp microtone blades in order to minimize artefacts in the measurements, and then ultra-careful atomic force microscope (AFM) measurements across cell walls from the edge of the lumen to the middle lamella at extremely high spatial resolution. The result is a detailed picture of the kinetic development and maturation of tension wood cells in a tree. The measurements showed that the G-layer reaches close to its final stiffness long before its final thickness, and this is different from the maturation kinetics of other cell wall layers where thickening and stiffening are generally synchronous. Finally, although the G-layer in poplar tension wood fibres and in flax phloem fibres are in many ways very similar there are clear differences in the kinetics of their development and maturation. The detailed information presented in this paper can therefore help to clarify the different hypothetical mechanisms proposed to explain excess stress generation in the tension wood of trees and help move us towards a full understanding of how the “muscles” of trees work.

References

Arnould O, Capron M, Ramonda M, Laurans F, Alméras T, Pilate G, Clair B (2022) Mechanical characterisation of the developing cell wall layers of tension wood fibres by Atomic Force Microscopy. bioRxiv, 2021.09.23.461481, ver. 4 peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Forest and Wood Science. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.09.23.461481

Seed physiology, which was a little forgotten in forest ecology since several decades, needs be revitalized as a research area given the many open questions about population dynamics and demography in rapidly changing environments (and not only for endangered species). 

Indeed, seed physiology was long mobilized mainly to optimize seed conservation and germination for the production of plant material in a range of tree species used for afforestation/plantation. In the case of back poplar (which by the way is the male genitor of the multiple hybrid Populus x euramerica poplar cultivars), the focus is rather on the conservation ecology of this riparian species, and mainly on in situ conservation (Lefèvre et al, 1998). Indeed, the protection of populations of Populus nigra L requires an improved understanding of the ecology of this species with a focus on reproduction. Indeed, black poplar seeds need to be rapidly disseminated, to germinate as soon as the conditions are favourable (with rather small time windows) and establish seedlings with access to water in the rather harsh environment of mobile and sandy river banks submitted to alternating periods of flooding and of severe water deficits during low river flows in summer (Imbert and Lefèvre, 2003; Corenblit et al, 2014; Tinschert et al, 2020).

This process is therefore central to the propagation/maintenance of these populations that are threatened by the destruction of river banks and by introgression by either genes from the widespread “Italica” cultivar of black poplar, of from other poplar species leading to a variety of natural hybrids (Smulders et al, 2008).

Many questions remain open about seeds of black poplar (Michalak et al, 2015). One of the most intriguing one is to what extent seed properties and physiology differ within and among local populations from different river catchments. This question was addressed in this preprint by Lefebvre et al. (2021) that provides a very detailed and comparative analysis of two populations from central and southern France, each represented by 10 half sib families (i.e., seed collected separately from 10 adult individuals after open pollination).

Investigated properties were mainly seed biomass, anatomy, germination rate, root growth, lipid and sugar contents, protein content (with identification of some major protein families).

The within populations variability was indeed quite large, but nevertheless there were significant differences between the two populations in several traits, like seed weight, lipid content, and starch content. Storage proteins differed among families, but only slightly between the two populations. However, the main conclusion was that intrinsic qualities of the seeds were not critical for early stage establishment in the two populations, despite some significant differences in mean seed biomass, in lipid and in soluble sugars contents.

The preprint nicely analyses these differences, brings a large set of new observations about the seed physiology of Populus nigra. The referees found the data produced during this research quite important and original. This is why, despite the fact that the number of tested groups of populations remains rather small and the link with seedling establishment remains rather weak, this study is an important contribution to conservation ecology. This research (and that of many other groups) needs be further developed with an emphasis on inter and intra population variation and on demogenetics of forest tree species.

References

Corenblit D., Steiger J., González, E et al. (2014), The biogeomorphological life cycle of poplars during the fluvial biogeomorphological succession: a special focus on Populus nigra L.. Earth Surf. Process. Landforms, 39: 546-563. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.3515

Imbert E. and Lefèvre F. (2003) Dispersal and geneflow of Populus nigra (Salicaceae) along a dynamic river system. Journal of Ecology  91: 447-456. doi: https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2745.2003.00772.x

Lefebvre M., Villar M., Boizot N., Delile A., Dimouro B., Lomelech A.-M. and Teyssier, C. (2021) Variability in seeds’ physicochemical characteristics, germination and seedling growth within and between two French Populus nigra populations. arXiv, 2008.05744, ver 3 peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer community in Forest and Wood Sciences. https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.05744

Lefèvre F., Légionnet A., de Vries S. and Turok J. (1998) Strategies for the conservation of a pioneer tree species, Populus nigra L., in Europe. Genetics, Selection, Evolution 30, S181-196. doi: https://doi.org/10.1186/1297-9686-30-S1-S181

Michalak M., Plitta B.P., Tylkowski T. et al. (2015) Desiccation tolerance and cryopreservation of seeds of black poplar (Populus nigra L.), a disappearing tree species in Europe. European Journal of Forest Research 134, 53–60. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-014-0832-4

Smulder M.J.M., Beringen R., Volosyanchuk R. et al. (2008) Natural hybridisation between Populus nigra L. and P. x canadensis Moench. Hybrid offspring competes for niches along the Rhine river in the Netherlands. Tree Genetics & Genomes 4, 663–675. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-008-0141-5

Tinschert E., Egger G., Wendelgass J. et al. (2020) Alternate reproductive strategies of Populus nigra influence diversity, structure and successional processes within riparian woodlands along the Allier River, France. Journal of Hydro-environment research 30, 100-108. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jher.2020.03.004

Water availability has been known to strongly modulate forest productivity and tree growth on an interannual basis (as revealed by numerous dendrochronological studies) and across biomes (Ellison et al, 2017). Recurrent episodes of severe drought lead to decreased soil water content and as a consequence to visible losses in annual growth increment, and in some cases even to tree death and forest decline. The occurrence of such drought events and of larger scale tree dieback, seem to be increasing over the last decades, albeit such processes are not new. The causes for drought-induced tree death are still disputed; in many cases, tree death occurs after the release of drought, and is caused by severe attacks by pests and pathogens. In other cases, tree death is caused by recurrent drought events over several years, leading to a depletion of stored carbohydrates, growth decline and ultimately death.
However, this understanding of drought-induced tree dieback, which applies to drought events that occurred in temperate climate biomes during the end of the 20th century, seems inadequate to explain the increasing occurrence of large scale dieback induces by recent drought episodes (Allen et al, 2015). In these recent cases a direct impairment of hydraulic functions seems responsible for tree death. Such impairments (cavitation and resulting massive embolism) have been well documented through extensive research that started in the 90s. Up to now, the consensus was that trees are fairly well protected against such potentially lethal dysfunctions: an efficient stomatal closure limits transpiration and the risk of runaway embolism. Many tree models based on the known hydraulic properties of trees (vulnerability of different organs to cavitation, hydraulic conductance of these organs, transpiration, stomatal conductance…) were developed since the seminal work of Tyree and Sperry (1989) and only seldom predicted the occurrence of runaway embolism (Cochard and Delzon, 2013).
These models considered the impact of drought through reduced soil water availability, which is indeed the central process during drought, but overlooked to some extent the fact that drought is frequently and increasingly associated to higher temperatures, which may change rather severely model parameters and result in a higher risk of runaway embolism.
The present preprint proposed by Cochard (2020) bases on such a new hydraulic model (the model SurEau, Martin StPaul et al, 2017; Cochard et al, 2020) integrating more explicitly the impact of temperature on different parameters. Two parameters appear particularly relevant and highly sensitive to temperature:
(i) the vapor pressure deficit of the air (VPD), which increases exponentially with temperature and results in increased transpiration and more rapid soil water depletion; this effect is well known and has been the matter of many research and modelling;
(ii) the cuticular conductance to water vapor, which becomes the most important limit to transpiration once stomata are closed, and which is much less well documented with respect to mean values and temperature sensitivity (mainly because this process is difficult to record). Recent advances (Schuster et al, 2016) provided some insight into the importance of this parameter and showed how it may rapidly increase with temperature (see references in the preprint).
The presented work bases on this new model to document more precisely how enhanced temperature may increase water loss through transpiration and consequently induce runaway embolism in trees more rapidly than usually expected. The hypothesis that the temperature response of cuticular conductance may play a central role in the sensitivity of trees to a combination of soil water depletion and enhanced air (and leaf) temperature was tested through numerical simulations with SurEau. The results are very clear: temperature-dependent increases in cuticular conductance may accelerate the onset of runaway embolism at a rate that was not expected before.
The demonstration is indeed very clear and convincing. It remains however a simulation (or an “in silico experiment”. Data providing real values of cuticular conductance remain scarce, and data documenting its response to enhanced temperatures even scarcer. This opens an avenue for new research and investigations, and Cochard (2020) provides some clues about which data and which experiments could confirm the central role of temperature induced changes in cuticular conductance with temperature (eg new measurements of Tp, the phase transition temperature that matches the range of temperatures known to trigger mortality during hot-droughts, Billon et al. (2020)).
I believe this preprint is an important contribution in this field, and the reviewers were of the same opinion (see their reviews attached to this recommendation). Indeed, this preprint illustrates how simulation exercises can help us identify some key processes that require further attention and documentation. I believe this is an important contribution to our understanding of the rapid, drought-induced tree death observed in different parts of the world at alarming rates.
As such, and combined with a detailed description of the model SurEau, this preprint is a very important addendum to the corpus of knowledge that is currently gathered around the hydraulic functioning of trees.

References

Allen, C. D., Breshears, D. D., and McDowell, N. G. (2015). On underestimation of global vulnerability to tree mortality and forest die‐off from hotter drought in the Anthropocene. Ecosphere, 6(8), 1-55. doi: https://doi.org/10.1890/ES15-00203.1
Billon et al. (2020). The DroughtBox: A new tool for phenotyping residual branch conductance and its temperature dependence during drought. Plant, Cell and Environment, 43, 1584-1594. doi https://doi.org/10.1111/pce.13750
Cochard, H. (2020) A new mechanism for tree mortality due to drought and heatwaves. bioRxiv, 531632, ver. 2 peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI Forest and Wood Sciences. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/531632
Cochard, H., Martin-StPaul, N., Pimont, F., and Ruffault, J. (2020). SurEau.c: a mechanistic model of plant water relations under extreme drought. bioRxiv, 2020.05.10.086678. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.10.086678
Ellison et al. (2017). Trees, forests and water: Cool insights for a hot world. Global Environmental Change, 43, 51-61. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2017.01.002
Martin‐StPaul, N., Delzon, S., and Cochard, H. (2017). Plant resistance to drought depends on timely stomatal closure. Ecology letters, 20(11), 1437-1447. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.12851
Schuster et al. (2016). Effectiveness of cuticular transpiration barriers in a desert plant at controlling water loss at high temperatures. AoB Plants, 8(1), plw027. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/aobpla/plw027
Tyree, M. T., and Sperry, J. S. (1989). Vulnerability of xylem to cavitation and embolism. Annual review of plant biology, 40(1), 19-36. doi: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.pp.40.060189.000315