Abstract
Investigating the growth behavior of plant root systems as a function of soil water is considered an important information for the study of root physiology. A non-invasive tool based on electromagnetic wave transmittance in the microwave frequency range, operating close to 4.8 GHz, was developed using microstrip patch antennas to determine the volumetric moisture of soil in rhizoboxes. Antennas were placed on both sides of the rhizobox and, using a vector network analyzer, measured the S parameters. The dispersion parameter S21 (dB) was also used to show the effect of different soil types and temperature on the measurement. In addition, system sensitivity, reproducibility and repeatability were evaluated. The quantitative results of the soil moisture, measured in rhizoboxes, presented in this paper, demonstrate that the microwave technique using microstrip patch antennas is a reliable, non-invasive and accurate system, and has shown potentially promising applications for measurement of rhizobox-based root phenotyping.
Highlights
New tools and approaches are considered important for the investigation and evaluation of soil–water–plant interactions in high-throughput plant phenotyping investigations [1]
The experimentwas was observe the variation the attenuation ofparameter the S21 under the influence of lab airofcondition, using anusing empty and a rhizobox filled with one parameter under the influence lab air condition, anrhizobox empty rhizobox and a rhizobox filled porous media (PM; Nullerde organic substrate with one density from dry soil) as well as with with one porous media (PM; Nullerde organic substrate with one density from dry soil) as well as 6 shows the bar graph
The results clearly show a correlation between the two variables reflecting that when the dielectric equipment used
Summary
New tools and approaches are considered important for the investigation and evaluation of soil–water–plant interactions in high-throughput plant phenotyping investigations [1]. A central parameter for determining root system response to water availability is that water is usually not homogeneously distributed in the soil and the heterogeneity significantly increases when drought stress occurs. The development of non-invasive instruments and sensors to measure soil moisture distribution would open up new approaches to investigate plant strategies to deal with low water content or, in particular, heterogeneities in water availability of soils during periods of drought cycles. From the electromagnetic point of view, the soil–plant–water set is considered a mixture of five dielectric compositions consisting of air, soil volume, bound water and free water and roots.
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