Imaging local soil kinematics during the first days of maize root growth in sand.

ABSTRACT: Maize seedlings are grown in Hostun sand with two different gradings and two different densities. The root-soil system is imaged daily for the first 8 days of plant growth with X-ray computed tomography. Segmentation, skeletonisation and digital image correlation techniques are used to analyse the evolution of the root system architecture, the displacement fields and the local strain fields due to plant growth in the soil. It is found that root thickness and root length density do not depend on the initial soil configuration. However, the depth of the root tip is strongly influenced by the initial soil density, and the number of laterals is impacted by grain size, which controls pore size, capillary rise and thus root access to water. Consequently, shorter root axes are observed in denser

SUBMITTER: Anselmucci F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8593153 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature