Imaging plant responses to water deficit using electrical resistivity tomography
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Imaging plant responses to water deficit using electrical resistivity tomography Sathyanarayan Rao & Nolwenn Lesparre & Adrián Flores Orozco & Florian Wagner & Mathieu Javaux
Received: 17 April 2020 / Accepted: 26 July 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Background and aims Monitoring root water uptake dynamics under water deficit (WD) conditions in fields are crucial to assess plant drought tolerance. In this study, we investigate the ability of Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) to capture specific soil water depletion induced by root water uptake. Methods A combination of surface and depth electrodes with a high spatial resolution (10 cm) was used to map 2-D changes of bulk soil electrical conductivity Responsible Editor: Peter J. Gregory. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-020-04653-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. S. Rao (*) : M. Javaux Department of Environmental Sciences, Earth and Life Institute, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium e-mail: [email protected] N. Lesparre Laboratoire d’Hydrologie et Géochimie de Strasbourg, University of Strasbourg/EOST/ENGEES, CNRS UMR 7517, 1 Rue Blessig, 67084 Strasbourg, France A. F. Orozco Geophysics Research Group, Vienna University of Technology, Gusshausstraße 27-29, E120-3, 1040 Vienna, Austria F. Wagner Institute for Applied Geophysics and Geothermal Energy, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany M. Javaux Agrosphere, IBG3, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
(EC) in an agronomic trial with different herbaceous species. A synthetic experiment was performed with a mechanistic model to assess the ability of the electrode configuration to discriminate abstraction patterns due to roots. The impact of root segments was incorporated in the forward electrical model using the power-law mixing model. Results The time-lapse analysis of the synthetic ERT experiment shows that different root water uptake patterns can be delineated for measurements collected under WD conditions but not under wet conditions. Three indices were found (depletion amount, maximum depth, and spread), which allow capturing plant-specific water signatures based moisture profile changes derived from EC profiles. When root electrical properties were incorporated in the synthetic experiments, it led to the wrong estimation of the amount of water depletion, but a correct ranking of plants depletion depth. When applied to the filed data, our indices showed that Cocksfoot and Ryegrass had shallower soil water depletion zones than white clover and white clover combined with Ryegrass. However, in terms of water depletion amount, Cocksfoot consumed the largest amount of water, followed by White Clover, Ryegrass+White Clover mixture, and Ryegrass. Conclusion ERT is a well-suited method for phenotyping root water uptake ability in field trials under WD conditions. Keywords Electrical resistivity tomography. Soil-root mode
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