e. photo-oxidative stress (Havaux & Kloppstech, 2001). Consistently, Boo et al. (2011) found higher anthocyanin concentrations in lettuce when low temperature was applied Ipatasertib cost during the photoperiod than during the night. This interacting, enhancing effect of low temperature and radiation has also been reported for Arabidopsis thaliana, emphasizing that the combination of chilling and elevated PPFD is especially likely to induce photoinhibition and photo-oxidation in

higher plants ( Havaux & Kloppstech, 2001). This may explain why our results differ from those of Oh et al. (2009). Apart from the different time span investigated (1 day as compared to several weeks in our experiment), they subjected their lettuce plants to 4 °C concurrent with radiation. Furthermore, they reduced the temperature by 16 K to 4 °C while we only reduced by 8 K to 7 °C. The larger magnitude of change and the application of a lower temperature during the photoperiod may exert more severe stress on plants and thus lead to an enhanced response. The conditions we applied are more realistic regarding lettuce production in greenhouses than the drastic conditions applied by other studies. In agreement with Løvdal et al. (2010), we conclude that in our experiment, the cyanidin glycoside truly responded to changes in temperature alone Small molecule library ic50 while quercetin and luteolin glycosides did not. As mentioned

above (Section 3.3.1), an over-excited electron transport chain in chloroplasts mainly produces O2- by electron transfer. Although cyanidin and quercetin are both flavonoids and both comprise an ortho   3′,4′-dihydroxy moiety, cyanidin has a higher O2- scavenging activity than quercetin ( Chun, Kim, & Lee, 2003). Quercetin on the other hand, is very effective against singlet oxygen (1O2) which is formed by energy transfer from excited triplet-state chlorophyll ( Tournaire et al., 1993). The life time of triplet chlorophyll increases in

excess radiation ( Havaux & Kloppstech, 2001). This may explain the differential regulation of these two substances. This interpretation Tobramycin is corroborated by Gill and Tuteja (2010) who report that 1O2 is involved in the activation of early stress response genes that are different from those activated by O2-. Cool-cultivated small heads contained higher concentrations of caffeoylmalic acid than warm-cultivated ones (Fig. 4 and Table 1). However, regarding mature heads, this difference is not detectable any more (Fig. 4 and Table 1). This also supports the hypothesis that the applied conditions were more stressful to small heads than to larger ones (see Section 3.3.1). Neither with small heads nor with mature heads we detected significantly different concentrations of chicoric acid or chlorogenic acid between the temperature treatments (Fig. 4 and Table 1).