Abstract
ABSTRACTIn soil, plant roots grow in heterogeneous environments. Plant roots are always facing the difficulty of searching effectively the patchy natural resources, such as water, oxygen, ions and mineral nutrition. Numerous studies reported that root apex navigation enables roots to explore complex environments. In this short communication, we characterize how growing maize roots explore narrow space available with two experimental settings: tactile exploration of narrow glass tube and circumnutation in free space. We also discuss root growth in the soil in terms of foraging behavior guided by the sensory root apex.
Highlights
Unlike comfortable well-equipped and conditioned laboratories, natural environments fluctuate drastically, changing resources available for survival of living organisms
If plant roots would only keep waiting until water and nutrient will approach root surfaces, they would not win the fierce natural competition among other species because resources are very limited in nature
Tactile sensation is essential to estimate the texture and the distance to object for many species. Do plants use this sense to get the information of space available in soil? It can be expected that roots are exploring narrow spaces of the soil in darkness by touching soil/rock surfaces
Summary
Unlike comfortable well-equipped and conditioned laboratories, natural environments fluctuate drastically, changing resources available for survival of living organisms. Do plants use this sense to get the information of space available in soil? It is well-known that plant root responds to touch stimuli via so-called mechanical sensation [3,5], there is almost no investigation and discussion about the possible space explorations via growing roots. We describe root behavior imposed on growing maize roots by challenging them via narrow glass tubes.
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