| Abstract: | Poor, delayed and ununiform budbreak is a major problem for peaches in greenhouse. To clari-fy the mechanism of breaking bud dormancy in nectarines, the effect of temperature and three dormancy-breaking agents on metabolic changes during dormancy release in two-year old NJ72 nectarine (Prunus persicaL. Batch) was investigated. The result showed temperature and chemicals affected the budbreak and the me-tabolism of NJ72 nectarine during dormancy. Endogeneons peroxide content in buds increased soon after lowtemperature treatment. Meanwhile, catalase activity was also shown to increase significantly at low temperature treatment, coincided with increase of the activity of peroxidase and superoxide dismntase. The rate of res-piration in flower buds increased at low temperature during dormancy. The rate of the pentose phosphate path-way increased, while the rate of the Embden-Meyerhof pathway decreased and the rate of triearboxlic acid cycle changed little. Glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase activity increased at low temperature during dormancy.At the same time we found an accumulation of peroxide after treatment with dormancy-breaking chemicals. Inflower buds treated with dormancy-breaking agents, thiourca, KNO3 and NH4 NO3, catalase activity was in-hibited soon after treatment, whereas peroxidase activity increased, and the changes of superoxide dismutaseremained little. In this study, it was found that the rates of respiration in flower buds increased by chemicalssprays during dormancy. The activity of glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase, the key enzyme in the pentosephosphate pathway (PPP), increased by spraying with dormancy-breaking agents, concomitantly with the ac-tivatlon of the pentose phosphate pathway. |
