Are we rooting for the right Interface? Understanding and Modeling the SoilRoot contact
(2024) ISRR 12th — Location: Leipzig (2.June.2024)
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- Abstract
- Plants must optimize their root system architecture to ensure efficient water acquisition in response to a changing and heterogeneous environment. Root development and uptake are highly sensitive to soil heterogeneity, particularly at the soil-root interface in the rhizosphere. Despite numerous simplifying assumptions regarding this local heterogeneity, plant uptake models have been relatively successful in estimating plant transpiration rates. However, when functional soil-plant models are used to predict both transpiration and plant water potential, significant discrepancies arise. Generally, plant water potential is overestimated, leading to a delayed simulated transpiration downregulation. These discrepancies suggest that the conductance of the soil-plant system is often overestimated. This indicates a gap in our ability to accurately measure or estimate the evolution of the spatial distribution of soil and plant hydraulic properties and water extraction sites. The notion of root activity and the potential processes that affect it within the root cortex, in the rhizosphere, or at the interface between them will be discussed. Through a review of multiple studies, we highlight common issues encountered when parameterizing soil and plant hydraulics. The observed discrepancies between empirical and modeled data point to several critical processes—such as root activity, root plasticity, and soil-root contact—that are inadequately represented in current models and need further research.
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Citations
Javaux, M. (2024). Are we rooting for the right Interface? Understanding and Modeling the SoilRoot contact. ISRR 12th, Leipzig. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/240817