Effects of leaf water evaporative ² H-enrichment and biosynthetic fractionation on leaf wax n-alkane δ² H values in C3 and C4 grasses

Leaf wax n-alkane δ² H values carry important information about environmental and ecophysiological processes in plants. However, the physiological and biochemical drivers that shape leaf wax n-alkane δ² H values are not completely understood. It is particularly unclear why n-alkanes in grasses are typically ² H-depleted compared with plants from other taxonomic groups such as dicotyledonous plants and why C3 grasses are ² H-depleted compared with C4 grasses. To resolve these uncertainties, we quantified the effects of leaf water evaporative ² H-enrichment and biosynthetic hydrogen isotope fractionation on n-alkane δ² H values for a range of C3 and C4 grasses grown in climate-controlled chambers. We found that only a fraction of leaf water evaporative ² H-enrichment is imprinted on the leaf wax n-alkane δ² H values in grasses. This is interesting, as previous studies have shown in dicotyledonous plants a nearly complete transfer of this ² H-enrichment to the n-alkane δ² H values. We thus infer that the typically observed ² H-depletion of n-alkanes in grasses (as opposed to dicots) is because only a fraction of the leaf water evaporative ² H-enrichment is imprinted on the δ² H values. Our experiments also show that differences in n-alkane δ² H values between C3 and C4 grasses are largely the result of systematic differences in biosynthetic fractionation between these two plant groups, which was on average -198‰ and-159‰ for C3 and C4 grasses, respectively.