ReviewAnnals of botany2011
Breeding crop plants with deep roots: their role in sustainable carbon, nutrient and water sequestration.
Review in Annals of botany, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 100 papers.
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Who cites it
100 citing papers in PubMed.
- Harnessing African forage biodiversity through a hub-and-spoke model for sustainable livestock transformation.Animal frontiers : the review magazine of animal agriculture · 2026Article
- Deep soil layers show the most pronounced genetic variation in wheat root length.Plant methods · 2026Article
- Exogenous porcine blood polypeptide alleviates drought damage in wheat.BMC plant biology · 2026Article
- Drought stress inFrontiers in plant science · 2026Review
- Leveraging root trait identification for winter wheat yield prediction using machine learning.Frontiers in plant science · 2026Article
- Diversity of root system architecture and root-shoot biomass allocation in industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa L.).PloS one · 2026Article
- Linking root length and surface area to yield: variety-specific root plasticity in winter wheat across contrasting European environments.Annals of botany · 2025Article
- Perennial Kernza cropping promotes rhizosphere microbiome stability and endophyte recruitment compared to annual wheat.Environmental microbiome · 2025Article
- Genetic analysis of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) genotypes for root traits, yield components and seed yield.Journal of applied genetics · 2025Article
- ClearDepth Method for Evaluations of Root Depth in Soil-Filled Pots.Bio-protocol · 2025Article
- Soil depth determines the microbial communities inMicrobiology spectrum · 2025Article
- Forecasting ecosystem outcomes of global change can be improved by integrating evolutionary biology and ecosystem science.American journal of botany · 2025Article
- Needs and opportunities to future-proof crops and the use of crop systems to mitigate atmospheric change.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Shifts in fungal communities drive soil profile nutrient cycling during grassland restoration.mBio · 2025Article
- Rootrainertrons: a novel root phenotyping method used to identify genotypic variation in lettuce rooting.Plant methods · 2025Article
- Article
- Intercropping with pear and cover crops as a strategy to boost soil carbon sequestration in the Taihang mountains' fragile ecosystems.Frontiers in plant science · 2025Article
- Fine root and soil carbon stocks are positively related in grasslands but not in forests.Communications earth & environment · 2025Article
- Article
- The whole-genome dissection of root system architecture provides new insights for the genetic improvement of alfalfa (Horticulture research · 2025Article
40 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe soil represents a reservoir that contains at least twice as much carbon as does the atmosphere, yet (apart from 'root crops') mainly just the above-ground plant biomass is harvested in agriculture, and plant photosynthesis represents the effective origin of the overwhelming bulk of soil carbon. However, present estimates of the carbon sequestration potential of soils are based more on what is happening now than what might be changed by active agricultural intervention, and tend to concentrate only on the first metre of soil depth. SCOPE: Breeding crop plants with deeper and bushy root ecosystems could simultaneously improve both the soil structure and its steady-state carbon, water and nutrient retention, as well as sustainable plant yields. The carbon that can be sequestered in the steady state by increasing the rooting depths of crop plants and grasses from, say, 1 m to 2 m depends significantly on its lifetime(s) in different molecular forms in the soil, but calculations (http://dbkgroup.org/carbonsequestration/rootsystem.html) suggest that this breeding strategy could have a hugely beneficial effect in stabilizing atmospheric CO(2). This sets an important research agenda, and the breeding of plants with improved and deep rooting habits and architectures is a goal well worth pursuing.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.