Abstract
Under field conditions, plants need to optimize nutrient ion and water acquisition in their fluctuating environment. One of the most important variables involved in variations of ion uptake processes is temperature. It modifies the thermodynamic processes of root uptake and ion diffusion in soil throughout day–night and ontogenetic cycles. Yet, most models of nitrogen (N) uptake in plants are built from set values of microscopic kinetic parameters, Vm and Km, derived from a Michaelis–Menten (MM) interpretation of nutrient isotherms. An isotherm is a curve depicting the response of root nitrate influx to external nitrate concentrations at a given temperature. Models using the MM formalism are based on several implicit assumptions that do not always hold, such as homothetic behavior of the kinetic parameters between the different root biological scales, i.e., the epidermis cell, root segments, root axes, and the whole root system. However, in marine phytoplankton, it has been clearly demonstrated that the macroscopic behavior in the nutrient uptake of a colony cannot be confounded with the microscopic behavior of individual cells, due to the cell diffusion boundary layer. The same is also true around plant root segments. Improved N uptake models should either take into account the flexibility of the kinetic parameters of nitrate uptake at the cellular level (porter–diffusion approach) or use the more realistic macroscopic kinetic parameters proposed by the flow–force approach. Here we present recent solutions proposed in marine phytoplankton and plant nutrient uptake models to make a more flexible description of the nutrient ion uptake process. Use of the mechanistic porter–diffusion approach developed in marine phytoplankton introduces more flexibility in response to cell characteristics and physical processes driven by temperature (diffusion and convection). The thermodynamic flow–force interpretation of plant-based nutrient uptake isotherms introduces more flexibility in response to environmental cues and root aging. These two approaches could help solve many problems that modelers encounter in these two research areas.
Highlights
Mechanistic plant modeling of root nitrate absorption in structure–function models suffers from two major biases
We show that the thermodynamic flow–force interpretation is more suitable and realistic than the Michaelis–Menten (MM) formalism for describing and interpreting nutrient uptake isotherms
Sigmoid asymptotic models of the N accumulation kinetics obtained are statistical representations of the kinetic behavior of N uptake for a given genotype of a monoculture crop (Figure 2A).The processes of N absorption and accumulation directly reflect the regulations exerted on the N absorption systems at root level in relation to changes in the environment that are similar for all N treatments, such as soil water content, nitrate concentration, soil temperature, irradiance, etc
Summary
Mechanistic plant modeling of root nitrate absorption in structure–function models suffers from two major biases. Sigmoid asymptotic models of the N accumulation kinetics obtained are statistical representations of the kinetic behavior of N uptake for a given genotype of a monoculture crop (Figure 2A).The processes of N absorption and accumulation directly reflect the regulations exerted on the N absorption systems (e.g., nitrate transporters) at root level in relation to changes in the environment that are similar for all N treatments, such as soil water content, nitrate concentration, soil temperature, irradiance, etc. There was greater heterogeneity for these variables in the deeper soil layers and most roots were localized in the top layers [22,27,28], except in the absence of N fertilization where the environments in the different soil layers probably became more homogenized This approach, used for winter oil seed rape growing under field conditions, allows patterns of N uptake rate index (NUI) to be determined for a wide range of nitrate concentrations in the first soil layer [22]. Analogical reasoning with the enzyme–substrate interpretation of ion uptake isotherms with the MM equation in microorganisms such as marine phytoplankton has led to a wrong interpretation and misappropriation of the phenomenological model of bacterial growth [49,50,51]
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