7 research outputs found
Non-destructive quantification of cereal roots in soil using high-resolution X-ray tomography
One key constraint to further understanding plant root development is the inability to observe root growth in situ due to the opaque nature of soil. Of the present non-destructive techniques, computed tomography (CT) is best able to capture the complexities of the edaphic environment. This study compared the accuracy and impact of X-ray CT measurement of in situ root systems with standard technology (soil core washing and WinRhizo analysis) in the context of treatments that differed in the vertical placement of phosphorus fertilizers within the soil profile. Although root lengths quantified using WinRhizo were 8% higher than that observed in the same plants using CT, measurements of root length by the two methodologies were highly correlated. Comparison of scanned and unscanned plants revealed no effect of repeated scanning on plant growth and CT was not able to detect any changes in roots between phosphorus treatments that was observed using WinRhizo. Overall, the CT technique was found to be fast, safe, and able to detect roots at high spatial resolutions. The potential drawbacks of CT relate to the software to digitally segment roots from soil and air, which will improve significantly as automated segmentation algorithms are developed. The combination of very fast scans and automated segmentation will allow CT methodology to realize its potential as a high-throughput technique for the quantification of roots in soils.Richard J. Flavel, Christopher N. Guppy, Matthew Tighe, Michelle Watt, Ann McNeill and Iain M. Youn
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Feeding nine billion: the challenge to sustainable crop production
In the recent past there was a widespread working assumption in many countries that problems of food production had
been solved, and that food security was largely a matter of
distribution and access to be achieved principally by open
markets. The events of 2008 challenged these assumptions,
and made public a much wider debate about the costs of
current food production practices to the environment and
whether these could be sustained. As in the past 50 years, it is anticipated that future increases in crop production will be achieved largely by increasing yields per unit area rather than by increasing the area of cropped land. However, as yields have increased, so the ratio of photosynthetic energy captured to energy expended in crop production has decreased. This poses a considerable challenge: how to increase yield while simultaneously reducing energy consumption (allied to greenhouse gas emissions) and utilizing resources such as water and phosphate more efficiently.
Given the timeframe in which the increased production
has to be realized, most of the increase will need to come
from crop genotypes that are being bred now, together with
known agronomic and management practices that are currently under-developed