Abstract
Symptoms of root stress are hard to detect using non-invasive tools. This study reveals proof of concept for vegetation indices’ ability, usually used to sense canopy status, to detect root stress, and performance status. Pepper plants were grown under controlled greenhouse conditions under different potassium and salinity treatments. The plants’ spectral reflectance was measured on the last day of the experiment when more than half of the plants were already naturally infected by root disease. Vegetation indices were calculated for testing the capability to distinguish between healthy and root-damaged plants using spectral measurements. While no visible symptoms were observed in the leaves, the vegetation indices and red-edge position showed clear differences between the healthy and the root-infected plants. These results were achieved after a growth period of 32 days, indicating the ability to monitor root damage at an early growing stage using leaf spectral reflectance.
Highlights
Plants may be damaged by biotic stress such as fungi, bacteria, viruses, or nematodes, or abiotic stress such as drought, salinity, extreme temperature, or physical damage [1]
It was the first to bring proof of concept and demonstrate early-stage spectral reflectance changes caused by root malfunctioning
The leaves did not show any noticeable visible change during the experiment, as an indication of the underground disease development, the measured daily transpiration declined with disease development, and the final plant weight was lower for damaged plants
Summary
Plants may be damaged by biotic stress such as fungi, bacteria, viruses, or nematodes, or abiotic stress such as drought, salinity, extreme temperature, or physical damage [1]. Both biotic and abiotic stress in plants may damage different tissues and organs of the plant. Any limitation of the root capabilities will reduce shoot productivity and eventually yield [2]. Prolong biotic or abiotic root rot disease reduces plant health and may eventually kill the plant [3,4]. Root rot severity depends on abiotic factors such as soil compaction, low oxygen level, unsuitable pH, irrigation patterns, and temperature [5,6]
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