Abstract
Soil is essential for sustaining life on land. Plant roots play a crucial role in stabilising soil and minimising erosion, although these mechanisms are still not completely understood. Consequently, identifying and breeding for plant traits to enhance erosion resistance is challenging. Root hair mutants in Arabidopsis thaliana were studied using three different quantitative methods to isolate their effect on root-soil cohesion. We present compelling evidence that micro-scale interactions of root hairs with surrounding soil increase soil cohesion and reduce erosion. Arabidopsis seedlings with root hairs were more difficult to detach from soil, compost and sterile gel media than those with hairless roots, and it was 10-times harder to erode soil from roots with than without hairs. We also developed a model that can consistently predict the impact root hairs make to soil erosion resistance. Our study thus provides new insight into the mechanisms by which roots maintain soil stability.
Highlights
Soil is essential for sustaining life on land
We overcome these limitations by using mutants and transgenic lines of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and novel root–gel attachment and uprooting resistance assays, as well as an established soil erosion assay in conjunction with a mathematical model to quantify the soil cohesion effects of root hairs
We developed a centrifugal assay that measures the strength of root–gel adhesion in Arabidopsis seedlings with and without root hairs (Fig. 2)
Summary
Soil is essential for sustaining life on land. Plant roots play a crucial role in stabilising soil and minimising erosion, these mechanisms are still not completely understood. While the importance of meso-scale root properties of plant species (e.g. length, diameter, surface area and tensile strength) that support soil erosion resistance has been well studied experimentally and through modelling[3,4,7,8] the understanding of the potential role of root micro-scale properties (e.g. root hairs, which are typically up to 1 mm long and tens of microns across) in controlling emergent soil properties like soil erosion resistance is limited. The explanatory power of prior studies is limited because root–soil cohesion may be influenced by inter-species differences other than those selected, especially differences in root microarchitecture We overcome these limitations by using mutants and transgenic lines of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and novel root–gel attachment and uprooting resistance assays, as well as an established soil erosion assay in conjunction with a mathematical model to quantify the soil cohesion effects of root hairs. Our work advances the quantitative understanding of how root hairs affect root–soil cohesion and have a measurable effect on soil erosion resistance
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