Abstract
Background and aims
Rooting plasticity is critical for plants exploiting patchy soil-water resources, but empirical evidence remains controversial due to complex root/soil interactions in natural and agricultural environments. We compared cultivated and wild Chenopodium populations from distinct agroecological background to assess their rooting plasticity when exposed to contrasting wet-dry soil profiles in a controlled environment.
Methods
Four treatments of increasing dryness were applied during 6 weeks in plants of Chenopodium hircinum, Chenopodium pallidicaule and two ecotypes (wet- and dry-habitat) of Chenopodium quinoa grown in rhizotrons. Root system architecture and growth were sequentially mapped. At the end of the experiment, plant and root morphological traits and dry biomass were measured.
Results
Contrary to the other two species, C. quinoa showed accelerated taproot growth in dry soil conditions. The dry-habitat C. quinoa ecotype showed consistently higher plant traits related to longer, coarser, and more numerous root segments which give it a faster taproot growth and sustained root branching at depth in dry soil.
Conclusions
High rooting plasticity confers the advantage of fast root elongation and deep soil exploration under soil water deficit. Variation in intrinsic root traits and plastic responses among Chenopodium populations controls their root foraging capacity facing patchy soil-water resources.
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Acknowledgements
This research was funded by a PhD grant of the “Capital Humano Avanzado” programme of CONICYT (Chile), by the ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche—The French National Research Agency, project ANR-06-PADD-011, EQUECO), and the collaborative program 2012-PCCI 12051 "Desarrollo de una perspectiva socioecológica para un rubro prometedor: la quínoa sostenible en Chile" between CONICYT (Chile) and IRD (France). We thank the staff of the Plateforme des Terrains d’Expériences and the Plateforme d’Analyses Chimiques en Écologie, technical facilities of the Labex CeMEB (ANR-10-LABX-0004-CeMEB) where the plants were grown and the root analyses done. We are most grateful to Felix Mamani Reynoso and Alejandro Bonifacio (Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, La Paz, Bolivia) for kindly providing the seeds of C. pallidicaule and C. hircinum, to Dr. Jairo A. Palta (CSIRO, Australia) for his detailed remarks and suggestions about this manuscript and to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.
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Alvarez-Flores, R., Nguyen-Thi-Truc, A., Peredo-Parada, S. et al. Rooting plasticity in wild and cultivated Andean Chenopodium species under soil water deficit. Plant Soil 425, 479–492 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-018-3588-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-018-3588-7