Fine roots are a major pathway of C input into soils. The aim of this study was to quantify fine root stocks, production and turnover in natural forest and land use systems converted from forests in Ethiopia. The study was conducted in a remnant Afromontane forest, eucalyptus plantation and grass and cropland in NW Ethiopia. Fine root dynamics were investigated using three different methods: se...

Understanding the factors that alter competitive interactions and coexistence between plants is a key issue in ecological research. A pot experiment was conducted to test the effects of root interaction and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) inoculation on the interspecies competition between Trifolium repens and Lolium perenne under different proportions of mixed sowing by the combination trea...

Lasiurus sindicus is a highly nutritive, drought tolerant, perennial grass, endemic to the Thar Desert of Rajasthan, India. In order to characterize the diversity of bacteria associated with roots of this grass that had survived severe drought stress, 16S-rRNA gene clone libraries were established from RT-PCR amplified products of the total RNA extracted from the washed roots and rhizosphere so...

The C(3) grass Poa trivialis and the C(4) grass Panicum maximum were grown in sand culture and received a complete nutrient solution with nitrogen supplied as 1.5 mol m(-3) NH(4)NO(3). (15)N tracer techniques were used to quantify the relative use of root uptake and mobilization in supplying nitrogen to growing leaves in intact plants which either continued to receive nitrogen or which received...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The regrowth dynamics after defoliation of the invasive grass Calamagrostis epigejos were studied. As nitrogen (N) reserves have been shown to play an important role during plant regrowth, the identity, location and relative importance for regrowth of N stores were determined in this rhizomatous grass. METHODS Plant growth, nitrate uptake and root respiration were followed...