Geneticists and breeders are positioned to breed plants with root traits that improve productivity under drought. However, a better understanding of root functional traits and how traits are related to whole plant strategies to increase crop productivity under different drought conditions is needed. Root traits associated with maintaining plant productivity under drought include small fine root...

Although linkages of leaf and whole-plant traits to leaf lifespan have been rigorously investigated, there is a limited understanding of similar linkages of whole-plant and fine root traits to root lifespan. In comparisons across species, do suites of traits found in leaves also exist for roots, and can these traits be used to predict root lifespan? We observed the fine root lifespan of 12 temp...

Root traits influence the amount of water and nutrient absorption, and are important for maintaining crop yield under drought conditions. The objectives of this research were to characterize variability of root traits among spring wheat genotypes and determine whether root traits are related to shoot traits (plant height, tiller number per plant, shoot dry weight, and coleoptile length), region...

Leaf and fine root morphology and physiology have been found to vary considerably among tree species, but not much is known about intraspecific variation in root traits and their relatedness to leaf traits. Various aspen progenies (Populus tremula and P. tremuloides) with different growth performance are used in short-rotation forestry. Hence, a better understanding of the link between root tra...

Root traits vary enormously among plant species but we have little understanding of how this variation affects their functioning. Of central interest is how root traits are related to plant resource acquisition strategies from soil. We examined root traits of 33 woody species from northeastern US forests that form two of the most common types of mutualisms with fungi, arbuscular mycorrhizas (AM...

The potential exists to breed for root system architectures that optimize resource acquisition. However, this requires the ability to screen root system development quantitatively, with high resolution, in as natural an environment as possible, with high throughput. This paper describes the construction of a low-cost, high-resolution root phenotyping platform, requiring no sophisticated equipme...

Physiological traits associated with drought tolerance are useful as surrogate traits for drought tolerance. Information on the association of root traits and water use efficiency (WUE) and plant growth in sugarcane is rather limited. The objective of this study was to evaluate genotypic variation for root traits, WUE and growth characters of above ground parts of sugarcane. A 2 × 10 factorial ...

The root system has a crucial role for plant growth and productivity. Due to the challenges of heterogeneous soil environments, diverse environmental signals are integrated into root developmental decisions. While root growth and growth responses are genetically determined, there is substantial natural variation for these traits. Studying the genetic basis of the natural variation of root growt...