Abstract
Background
Agroforestry has been advocated as a climate-smart agricultural approach to counter extreme climate and as an important sustainable intensification practice to meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, its efficacy remains under dispute in drylands where resources, especially water, are limited.
Aim and methods
This study aimed to study how annual bioenergy crops, soybean (Glycine max) and canola (Brassica rapa), influence soil water availability and fine root distribution in a young apple orchard exposed to varying to drought intensity on the semiarid Loess Plateau of China. Drought was simulated by reducing natural precipitation by 15% (moderate drought) and 25% (severe drought).
Result and conclusions
Intercropping soybean and canola increased the fine root biomass (FRB) of apple trees in the 80–180 cm soil layer, improved moisture status below the 80 cm soil layer in the wet season, and promoted apple tree growth. Under moderate drought, FRB in the 0–80 cm soil layer increased, making use of the shallow soil water replenished by precipitation. However, the trees switched to absorbing soil water in the 80–180 cm in the dry season. Under severe drought, the apple trees increased FRB in the 0–80 cm and 180–280 cm soil layers and increased the proportion of the total roots in the 180–280 cm layer, aggravating the deep soil desiccation and inhibiting apple tree growth. These findings offer insights into drought effects on root plasticity and soil management practices in rainfed orchards.
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Data availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the Mizhi County government for supporting our work. Thanks to Dr. Yuanyuan Zhang for her help with sampling.
Funding
This work was jointly supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2021YFD1900700), National Natural Science Foundation of China (42125705), the Cyrus Tang Foundation, the Shaanxi Key Research and Development Program (2020ZDLNY07-04), Natural Science Basic Research Program of Shaanxi (2021JC-19).
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X.G. and X.Z. conceived the study. X.G., X.Z. and L.Z. designed the experiement. L.Z. collected data and performed data analysis. L.Z., X.G., X.Z., and N.H. wrote the paper. K.H.M. S. and J.W. reviewed and edited the paper.
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Zhao, L., He, N., Wang, J. et al. Plasticity of root traits in a seedling apple intercropping system driven by drought stress on the Loess Plateau of China. Plant Soil 480, 541–560 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-022-05603-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-022-05603-1