Abstract
To provide enough space to carry all surface charges responsible for high cation exchange capacity of plant roots, large area of the root specific surface is necessary, however all experimental methods used up to date give too small surface area values. In this paper, we propose to measure the plant roots surface area using water vapor adsorption isotherm. This method gives roots specific surface areas compatible to CEC. Methodical aspects of the measurements are described along with theoretical background for calculating specific surface area on the example of roots of barley grown in nutrient solution.
Highlights
Most interactions between plant and soil take place at root-soil interface
We propose to measure the plant roots surface area using water vapor adsorption isotherm
Despite the usefulness of adsorption isotherm for estimation of surface areas of soils, clays, minerals, soil organic matter, industrial and chromatographic adsorbents, powders and many other solids, confirmed by enormous amount of results published, adsorption isotherms are rarely used for determination of plant roots specific surfaces
Summary
Most interactions between plant and soil take place at root-soil interface. One side of this interface consists from soil solid particles, air and solution, and the second side from root surface being in contact with soil constituents. The surface area of plant roots of a few square centimeters to a few square meters per gram, measured by immersion of roots in water or in electrolyte solutions, is reported [6,7] that is far too small to provide enough space for surface charged groups. Despite the usefulness of adsorption isotherm for estimation of surface areas of soils, clays, minerals, soil organic matter, industrial and chromatographic adsorbents, powders and many other solids, confirmed by enormous amount of results published, adsorption isotherms are rarely used for determination of plant roots specific surfaces Some results showing their applicability for assessment of changes of plant roots surfaces under aluminum and heavy metals stresses can be found in [4,8,9,10,11]. Because water vapor adsorption better relates to plant behavior in natural conditions than nitrogen adsorption, the present paper is designed to present methodical theoretical aspects of plant roots surface area measurements from water vapor adsorption isotherms using vacuum chamber method
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