Flowering in Lentil (Lens culinaris Medic.): The Duration of the Photoperiodic Inductive Phase as a Function of Accumulated Daylength above the Critical Photoperiod

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Abstract
The durations from emergence to the appearance of first flower buds and to first open flowers were recorded in three genotypes of lentil (Lens culinaris Medic.) when plants were transferred from short days (either 8 or 10 h) to long days (16 h), or vice versa, after various times from emergence. These results were compared with those of control treatments in which plants remained in either short or long days throughout. Four developmental phases were identified: pre-emergence, pre-inductive, inductive and post-inductive. The first two phases and the last are insensitive to photoperiod, but are probably sensitive to temperature. The duration of the inductive phase, which has to be completed before flowering can occur at the end of the post-inductive phase, can be predicted by assuming that its reciprocal is a linear function of both photoperiod and temperature. It follows that the critical photoperiod decreases with increase in temperature and that the duration of the inductive phase can be calculated from a summation of the amounts by which successive daylengths exceed the critical photoperiod until a value (‘the photoperiodic sum’) characteristic of the genotype is reached. The implications of these findings for predictive field models of time to flowering in lentils are discussed.

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