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A biomechanical model for maize root lodging

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Abstract

Background and aims

Root lodging is a structural failure of the root-soil anchorage system in a plant that adversely affects its yield. It is a complex phenomenon that depends strongly on both crop genetics and environmental factors. An accurate biomechanical model to predict root lodging would disentangle the component factors and improve development of lodging resistant plants, thereby reducing the constraint of root lodging on crop yields.

Methods

We developed a biomechanical model that employs an engineering safety factor approach to quantify root lodging resistance as the ratio of anchorage supply and wind demand. We also conducted field experiments to parametrize the model for a sensitivity analysis and validate the model for predictive accuracy.

Results

The sensitivity analysis revealed primary, secondary, and tertiary factors for root lodging. The primary factors consisted of root angle, structural rooting depth, soil strength, and wind speed. The secondary factors were plant height, ear height, leaf area, stalk taper, ear mass, and leaf drag. Tertiary factors were stalk diameter and leaf number. The validation analysis found the model predictions compared well with data collected from three natural lodging events, with a goodness-of-fit of 0.58.

Conclusions

The model effectively described a collection of natural lodging events, giving confidence in its predictive accuracy as well as the relative phenotypic and envirotypic influence factors determined in the sensitivity analysis. There are significant opportunities for model improvement, perhaps most significantly in the phenomenological understanding of the physical process.

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Notes

  1. Not to be confused with goose-necking, a biological process through which above-ground plant organs recover their verticality following a root lodging event through phototrophic growth.

  2. ‘Fully intact’ refers to plants whose roots systems have not been reduced by root worm feeding.

  3. Note: results were obtained for a single growth medium, a reconstituted mixture of sandy loam top soil, peat, and sand in 7:3:2 volumetric proportion (Goodman and Ennos 1999).

  4. The difference in material response is of more consequence for stalk material failure, provisioned for a future version of the model.

  5. Each node was assigned a thickness value of 6.4 mm.

  6. Briefly: in considering boundary value problems, the Finite Element method discretizes the domain into a mesh of interconnected finite elements. The vertices that define the coordinates of the elements are called nodes. They should not be confused with stalk nodes.

  7. See Horn and Lebert (1994) and Wulfsohn et al. (1998) for discussion of total versus effective stress measures as pertains to agricultural soils.

  8. Ear height was not measured, as the plants had lodged before development of any significant ear.

  9. Ear height was included in the sensitivity analysis to gauge its effect, as well as that of ear mass. It was not included in the validation analysis because the plants were still in vegetative states when lodging occurred.

  10. It is noted that these results incorporated both root and stem lodging of wheat plants.

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Acknowledgements

Matt Smalley, Ted Diehl, Neil Hausmann, Igor Coelho, Alan Wedgewood.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DuPont Pioneer, Johnston, IA, USA

    Philip F. Brune, Andy Baumgarten, Steve J. McKay & Frank Technow

  2. Materials Research & Design, Wayne, PA, USA

    John J. Podhiny

Authors
  1. Philip F. Brune
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  2. Andy Baumgarten
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  3. Steve J. McKay
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  4. Frank Technow
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  5. John J. Podhiny
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Correspondence to Philip F. Brune.

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Responsible Editor: Alexia Stokes

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Brune, P.F., Baumgarten, A., McKay, S.J. et al. A biomechanical model for maize root lodging. Plant Soil 422, 397–408 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-017-3457-9

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