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Methods to estimate changes in soil water for phenotyping root activity in the field.

ABSTRACT: Background and aims:There is an urgent need to develop new high throughput approaches to phenotype roots in the field. Excavating roots to make direct measurements is labour intensive. An alternative to excavation is to measure soil drying profiles and to infer root activity. Methods:We grew 23 lines of wheat in 2013, 2014 and 2015. In each year we estimated soil water profiles with electrical resistance tomography (ERT), electromagnetic inductance (EMI), penetrometer measurements and measurements of soil water content. We determined the relationships between the measured variable and soil water content and matric potential. Results:We found that ERT and penetrometer measurements were closely related to soil matric potential and produced the best discrimination between wheat lines. We found genotypic differences in depth of water uptake in soil water profiles and in the extent of surface drying. Conclusions:Penetrometer measurements can provide a reliable approach to comparing soil drying profiles by different wheat lines, and genotypic rankings are repeatable across years. EMI, which is more sensitive to soil water content than matric potential, and is less effective in drier soils than the penetrometer or ERT, nevertheless can be used to rapidly screen large populations for differences in root activity.

SUBMITTER: Whalley WR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6979655 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Methods to estimate changes in soil water for phenotyping root activity in the field.

Whalley W R WR Binley A A Watts C W CW Shanahan P P Dodd I C IC Ober E S ES Ashton R W RW Webster C P CP White R P RP Hawkesford M J MJ

Plant and soil 20170112 1

<h4>Background and aims</h4>There is an urgent need to develop new high throughput approaches to phenotype roots in the field. Excavating roots to make direct measurements is labour intensive. An alternative to excavation is to measure soil drying profiles and to infer root activity.<h4>Methods</h4>We grew 23 lines of wheat in 2013, 2014 and 2015. In each year we estimated soil water profiles with electrical resistance tomography (ERT), electromagnetic inductance (EMI), penetrometer measurements ...[more]

PMID: 32025056

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Project description:Ecohydrological isotope based field research is often constrained by a lack of temporally explicit soil water data, usually related to the choice of destructive sampling in the field and subsequent analysis in the laboratory. New techniques based on gas permeable membranes allow to sample soil water vapor in situ and infer soil liquid water isotopic signatures. Here, a membrane-based in situ soil water vapor sampling method was tested at a grassland site in Freiburg, Germany. It was further compared with two commonly used destructive sampling approaches for determination of soil liquid water isotopic signatures: cryogenic vacuum extraction and centrifugation. All methods were tested under semi-controlled field conditions, conducting an experiment with dry-wet cycling and two isotopically different labeling irrigation waters. We found mean absolute differences between cryogenic vacuum extraction and in situ vapor measurements of 0.3-14.2‰ (δ18O) and 0.4-152.2‰ (δ2H) for soil liquid water. The smallest differences were found under natural abundance conditions of 2H and 18O, the strongest differences were observed after irrigation with labeled waters. Labeling strongly increased the isotopic variation in soil water: Mean soil water isotopic signatures derived by cryogenic vacuum extraction were -11.6 ± 10.9‰ (δ18O) and +61.9 ± 266.3‰ (δ2H). The in situ soil water vapor method showed isotopic signatures of -12.5 ± 9.4‰ (δ18O) and +169.3 ± 261.5‰ (δ2H). Centrifugation was unsuccessful for soil samples due to low water recovery rates. It is therefore not recommended. Our study highlights that the in situ soil water vapor method captures the temporal dynamics in the isotopic signature of soil water well while the destructive approach also includes the natural lateral isotopic heterogeneity. The different advantages and limitations of the three methods regarding setup, handling and costs are discussed. The choice of method should not only consider prevailing environmental conditions but the experimental design and goal. We see a very promising tool in the in situ soil water vapor method, capturing both temporal developments and spatial variability of soil water processes.

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Methods to estimate changes in soil water for phenotyping root activity in the field.

Publications

Methods to estimate changes in soil water for phenotyping root activity in the field.

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