Root system responses of D. glomerata and M. sativa to water stress in pure or mixed stands
(2019) 24th National Symposium for Applied Biological Sciences — Location: Ghent University, Belgium (4.February.2019)
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- Abstract
- Climatic projections indicate that, Belgium might face a significant change in rainfall regime with up to 25% less precipitations in Summer by the end of the 21st century. This would lead to water stresses for plants. Grasslands, that make for a large part of Belgian agricultural system would be amongst the most affected by these dryer conditions and would be likely to see their yields decrease. To tackle the issue, UCLouvain launched the ForDrought project in 2012, whose overal goal is to improve the performance of forage crops to cope with climate change. The specific objectives of this study were to observe the responses of root systems of grassland plants when facing a water deficit and to assess the effect of plant species association. The species studied were Dactylis glomerata and Medicago sativa. Large pits were dug in front of experimental agricutural parcels to carry out differents measurements on the root system. The root numbers in each pit were counted, soil samples containing roots were taken and the roots were analyzed genetically to determine the specie to which they belonged. In addition, the parcels were harvested and yield calculated four times over the course of one year. The results showed that a water deficit has an impact on the number of roots of both species. The genetic analyses showed, quite surprisingly, that Dactylis was not detected when it was alongside alfalfa. Finally, they showed that the yield is negatively impacted by water deficit while the association of species does not produce. (1) Taggart J.M., Cahill J.F., McNickle G.G., Hall J.C., (2011), Molecular identification of roots from a grassland community using size differences in fluorescently labelled PCR amplicons of three cpDNA regions: Molecular diagnostics and DNA taxonomy, Molecular Ecology Resources, 11,1, 185-195 (2) Robbins N.E., Dinneny J.R., (2015), The divining root: moisture-driven responses of roots at the micro- and macro-scale, Journal of Experimental Botany, 66, 8, 2145-2154
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Destrée, B., Draye, X., & Javaux, M. (2019). Root system responses of D. glomerata and M. sativa to water stress in pure or mixed stands. Communications in Agricultural and Applied Biological Sciences, 84(1), 8. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/57175 (Original work published 2019)