TY - JOUR
T1 - Root taxa identification in plant mixtures - current techniques and future challenges
AU - Rewald, Boris
AU - Meinen, Catharina
AU - Trockenbrodt, Michael
AU - Ephrath, Jhonathan E.
AU - Rachmilevitch, Shimon
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgement The authors wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. B.R. acknowledges support by a postdoctoral fellowship awarded by the Jacob Blaustein Center for Scientific Cooperation (BCSC), Israel.
PY - 2012/10/1
Y1 - 2012/10/1
N2 - Background: Studying root biomass, root system distribution and belowground interactions is essential for understanding the composition of plant communities, the impact of global change, and terrestrial biogeochemistry. Most soil samples and minirhizotron pictures hold roots of more than one species or plant individual. The identification of taxa by their roots would allow species-specific questions to be posed; information about root affiliation to plant individuals could be used to determine intra-specific competition. Scope: Researchers need to be able to discern plant taxa by roots as well as to quantify abundances in mixed root samples. However, roots show less distinctive features that permit identification than aboveground organs. This review discusses the primary use of available methods, outlining applications, shortcomings and future developments. Conclusion: Methods are either non-destructive, e. g. visual examination of root morphological criteria in situ, or require excavated and excised root samples. Among the destructive methods are anatomical keys, chemotaxonomic approaches and molecular markers. While some methods allow for discerning the root systems of individual plants, others can distinguish roots on the functional group or plant taxa level; methods such as IR spectroscopy and qPCR allow for quantifying the root biomass proportion of species without manual sorting.
AB - Background: Studying root biomass, root system distribution and belowground interactions is essential for understanding the composition of plant communities, the impact of global change, and terrestrial biogeochemistry. Most soil samples and minirhizotron pictures hold roots of more than one species or plant individual. The identification of taxa by their roots would allow species-specific questions to be posed; information about root affiliation to plant individuals could be used to determine intra-specific competition. Scope: Researchers need to be able to discern plant taxa by roots as well as to quantify abundances in mixed root samples. However, roots show less distinctive features that permit identification than aboveground organs. This review discusses the primary use of available methods, outlining applications, shortcomings and future developments. Conclusion: Methods are either non-destructive, e. g. visual examination of root morphological criteria in situ, or require excavated and excised root samples. Among the destructive methods are anatomical keys, chemotaxonomic approaches and molecular markers. While some methods allow for discerning the root systems of individual plants, others can distinguish roots on the functional group or plant taxa level; methods such as IR spectroscopy and qPCR allow for quantifying the root biomass proportion of species without manual sorting.
KW - Anatomy and morphology
KW - Chemotaxonomy
KW - IR Spectroscopy
KW - Molecular markers
KW - Root biomass
KW - Root taxa determination
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84866502668&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11104-012-1164-0
DO - 10.1007/s11104-012-1164-0
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:84866502668
SN - 0032-079X
VL - 359
SP - 165
EP - 182
JO - Plant and Soil
JF - Plant and Soil
IS - 1-2
ER -