● Background and aims. The objective of this study was to test whether the mean values of several root morphological variables were related to the ability to develop root-borne shoots and/or shoot-borne roots in a wide range of vascular plants. ● Methods. A comparative study was carried out on the 123 most common plant species from eroded lands in NE Spain. After careful excavations in the fiel...

Grafting provides a tool aimed to increase low-P stress tolerance of crops, however, little is known about the mechanism (s) by which rootstocks can confer resistance to P deprivation. In this study, 4 contrasting groups of rootstocks from different genetic backgrounds (Solanum lycopersicum var. cerasiforme and introgression and recombinant inbred lines derived from the wild relatives S. pennel...

In the commercial production of roses, introducing a method to reduce the time of propagation with maximum success is crucial. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of different concentrations (0, 1500, 3000, 4500 mg/L) of Indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) on propagation of three cultivars of Rosa hybrid L. ('Dolce Vita', 'Samurai' and 'Utopia') by stenting (simultaneous cutting and graf...

The genetic control of root weight, root volume and root to shoot weight ratio was studied in peas (Pisum sativum L.) at flowering. The four populations used were developed from crosses between lines and cultivars differing in size of the root systems. Plants of the F 1, F 2 , backcross and parental generations were evaluated in pots filled with soil: sand mixture, in a completely randomized de...

Shoot biomass is considered a relevant component for crop yield, but relationships between biological productivity and grain yield in legume crops are usually difficult to establish. Two field experiments were carried out to investigate the relationships between grain yield, biomass production and N and P accumulation at reproductive stages of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) cultivars. Nine an...

Long-term use of drip irrigation technology may lead to root degradation and affect shoot growth and yield. A field experiment was conducted to investigate aboveand belowground growth responses to drip irrigation under mulch film (DI) in comparison to flood irrigation under mulch film (FI) in cotton. The monolith method was used to harvest roots at seven timepoints in the growth periods, and th...

Competition is a key feature that structures the composition of plant communities. A growing body of evidence is showing that the presence of neighbours, especially belowground neighbours, induces varied morphological responses in plants. However, in many species, it is not known whether neighbour identity also influences plant morphological responses such as biomass allocation patterns. To ass...

In this paper, the effect of plant density, sediment type, and macrophyte fragment size on the fragment colonization ability of Myriophyllum spicatum was evaluated in an outdoor experiment. The relative growth rate (RGR) was higher in the mud and low-density treatments than in the sand and high-density treatments. The relative elongation rate (RER) decreased with increasing density and fragment...

Our understanding of plant growth in response to nitrogen (N) supply is mainly based on studies of mutants and transformants. This study explored the natural variability of Arabidopsis thaliana first to find out its global response to N availability and secondly to characterize the plasticity for growth and N metabolism among 23 genetically distant accessions under normal (N+), limited (N-), an...