Effects of field experimental warming on wheat root distribution under conventional tillage and no‐tillage systems

Abstract Despite the obvious importance of roots to agro‐ecosystem functioning, few studies have attempted to examine the effects of warming on root biomass and distribution, especially under different tillage systems. In this study, we performed a field warming experiment using infrared heaters on winter wheat, in long‐term conventional tillage and no‐tillage plots, to determine the responses of root biomass and distribution to warming. Soil monoliths were collected from three soil depths (0–10, 10–20, and 20–30 cm). Results showed that root biomass was noticeably increased under both till and no‐till tillage systems (12.1% and 12.9% in 2011, and 9.9% and 14.5% in 2013, in the two tillage systems, respectively) in the 0–30 cm depth, associated with a similar increase in shoot biomass. However, warming‐induced root biomass increases occurred in the deeper soil layers (i.e., 10–20 and 20–30 cm) in till, while the increase in no‐till was focused in the surface layer (0–10 cm). Differences in the warming‐induced increases in root biomass between till and no‐till were positively correlated with the differences in soil total nitrogen (R 2 = .863, p < .001) and soil bulk density (R 2 = .853, p < .001). Knowledge of the distribution of wheat root in response to warming should help manage nutrient application and cycling of soil C‐N pools under anticipated climate change conditions.

• Publication year

  2018

• Venue

  Ecology and Evolution

• Publication date

  2018-01-29

• Fields of study

  Agricultural and Food Sciences, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1002/ece3.3864PMID 29531664PMCID 5838074
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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