Principles of Soil and Plant Water Relations

Escrito por M. B. Kirkham

America's most wanted j-o-b-s - 10 hottest employment opportunities Effective organizational communication: a competitive advantage tips for effective listening: productive listening does not occur naturally! "t re#uires hard wor$ and practice - %ac$ &o %asics - effective listening is a crucial s$ill for internal auditors 'ulture( leadership( and power: the $eys to organizational change - includes bibliography &he dropout dilemma: )ne in four college freshmen drop out! *hat is going on here+ *hat does it ta$e to stay in+ Abstract We report the results from a field experiment in which we examined the spatial and temporal patterns of water uptake by a mature apple tree (Malus domestica Borkh., 'Splendour') in an orchard. Time domain reflectometry was used to measure changes in the soil's volumetric water content, and heat-pulse was used to monitor locally the rates of sap flow in the trunk and roots of the tree. The tree's distribution of root-length density and supporting data to characterise the soil's hydraulic properties were determined for the purpose of modelling soil water movement in the root-zone under an apple tree. Experimental data are compared against the output from a numerical model of the soil water balance that uses Richards' equation for water flow, and uses a distributed macroscopic sink term for root uptake. In general, there was a very good agreement between the measured and modelled results. The apple trees consumed some 70 L of water per day during the middle of summer. The daily water use declined to about 20 L per day with the onset of autumn, coinciding with a reduced evaporative demand and an increasing number of rain days. Water movement in the root-zone soil was dominated by the water uptake via surface roots. Large changes in soil water content were also associated with each irrigation event. Our experimental data support the contention that more frequent irrigation in smaller doses will result in less water percolating through the root-zone. Such an irrigation strategy should make more efficient use of water by minimising the leaching losses. It will also be helpful for environmental protection by reducing the percolation losses of water and solute beyond the grasp of the roots. Additional keywords: sap-flow, time-domain reflectometry (TDR), transpiration, soil water, modelling.

Introduction Water is the vehicle that carries essential nutrients, such as nitrogen and other trace elements, through the soil to the plant roots where they may be absorbed and utilised for growth, reproduction, and maintenance of plant organs. Water is also the medium through which dissolved carbon dioxide gas is exchanged between stomata on the leaf surfaces and the ambient air. In the long term, any water loss via transpiration from the leaves must be matched by water uptake from the plant root system. 'Water moves in all parts of the complicated soil--plant--atmosphere system down a gradient of potential (Philip 1957)' ... this concept gives a useful first picture, but it must be emphasised that for real plants the 3-dimensional disposition of roots, leaves, and other plant parts makes for a more complicated problem (Philip 1977). The dynamics of water and solute transport in unsaturated soil affect many aspects of soil management, such as the timing and rate of irrigation and fertiliser applications, sustainable loadings of wastewater disposal, as well as effective strategies for remediation and soil decontamination. With the use of fertigation and the more traditional methods of fertiliser application, the goal is to maintain an adequate supply of water and nutrients within the rootzone. During the growing season, pesticides and other chemicals may also be applied to crops grown under intensive agricultural practices, to control a wide range of weeds, pests, and diseases that may affect crop production. For environmental protection, it is imperative that any percolation losses of water and chemical below the root-zone are minimised. Thus, it is critical to be able to determine, both for production purposes and for environmental protection, whether the dispatch of root-zone soil water and its dissolved solutes is by root uptake or by consignment to receiving water bodies. The movement of soil water, and of any water-borne chemicals, is frequently a direct result of the action of plant roots. If we are to understand better, and to model effectively, soil and plant processes then we need at least a quantitative means of describing the process of uptake by the roots. This is particularly true if we are to predict the fate of any surface-applied water and chemicals because roots are the 'big movers' in soil (Clothier and Green 1997). First, however, we must obtain better observations of these uptake processes in order to decipher how they are affected by the water and nutrient status of the root-zone environment. In developing equitable and sustainable irrigation strategies for orchard trees, our research over the last two decades has focussed on determining the influence of environmental factors that are controlling tree water-use and

determining the plant's need for irrigation (Green and Clothier 2002). That research has lead to the parallel development of new measurement techniques, to observe what is going on both above and below the ground, and new modelling tools to help explain our observations and to extrapolate them to other situations. We have developed a Whirligig radiometer (McNaughton et al. 1992), in conjunction with heat-pulse measurements of sap flow (Green et al. 2002a), to measure the transpiration rates of trees. Time domain reflectometry (TDR) has been used to monitor water and chemical movement in the root-zone soil (Vogeler et al. 2001), and disk permeameters have been used to characterise the soil's water and chemical transport properties (Clothier and ,mettem 1990; Clothier et al. 1996). More recently, we have developed simple risk assessment models that synthesise our knowledge of the soil--plant--atmosphere system (Green et al. 1999). These tools are being developed and used by irrigation consultants and local council regulators, to allow them to make informed decisions about crop irrigation needs (Green et al. 2002b) and the likely impacts of land use activities on the leaching risks associated with intensive pesticide spray programs onto agricultural land (Green and Clothier 2002). This modelling-measurement dualism forms an important link in all aspects of our research. Observation, experiment, and modelling together are the essential components of a whole-system approach (Nuttle 2000). In this paper we present some measurements of water uptake by mature apple trees growing in an orchard. Experimental observations are compared against the output from a deterministic model (PSILAYER) of the soil water dynamics and root uptake (Green 1997). We use the comparison between measured and predicted patterns of water uptake to illustrate the prime role played by the plant in establishing the water balance of the root-zone. Two different irrigation regimes are used to test the model output and to compare the efficiency of these two irrigation strategies. Materials and methods Experimental site and plant material The experiment was carried out in the -assey .niversity research orchard near Palmerston North, New Zealand (40.2[degrees] S, 175.4[degrees] E), over a 13-week period throughout summer 1996. The soil is a Manawatu fine sandy loam consisting of about 0.4 m of sandy loam underlain by about 0.4 m of fine sand, with a gravelly coarse sand beyond about 0.8 m (Clothier et al. 1977). An in situ characterisation of the hydraulic conductivity and water retention characteristics was made in each soil layer, to derive the soil's hydraulic properties that are needed for the modelling.

Two mature trees were selected from the middle of a block of similar-sized apple trees (Malus domestica Borkh., 'Splendour') planted at a tree spacing of 4 m in rows which were 4.5 m apart. Each tree was about 14 years old and was managed as a central leader, with a crown height of about 5 m and a crown width of about 3 m. The total leaf area, [A.sub.T] of each tree was measured at the end of the experiment by removing all leaves and passing a subsample (5% by weight) through a Licor leaf area meter. The 2 trees had similar leaf areas (43.8 and 50.6 [m.sup.2] of leaf). The corresponding leafarea density was between 3.0 and 3.5 [m.sup.2] of leaf per [m.sup.3] of canopy volume. The final apple yield was about 120 kg (fresh weight) per tree. The leaf density and fruit yield is typical of a NZ apple orchard (J. Palmer, pers. comm.).
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