ArticleJournal of experimental botany2016
Root hairs aid soil penetration by anchoring the root surface to pore walls.
Article in Journal of experimental botany, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers.
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Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed.
- Mechanical constraint causes lower turgor, thicker walls, and faster growth in Arabidopsis root hairs.Plant physiology · 2026Article
- Unearthing Root Response Mechanisms to Soil Compaction in Legumes.Plant, cell & environment · 2026Review
- RootHairAreaFinder: an image processing method for quantifying barley root growth and root hairs simultaneously in a flat rhizotron system.Plant methods · 2026Article
- Method for the Dissection of Genomic Loci Associated with Chickpea Root Penetration Traits in Compact Soil.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2026Article
- Soybean root elongation in relation to water and mechanical stresses in intact and disturbed structures of an Oxisol.Frontiers in plant science · 2026Article
- The role of maize (Zea mays) radicle root hairs in seedling establishment under adverse phosphorus and water seedbed conditions.Annals of botany · 2025Article
- CPK1 activates CNGCs through phosphorylation for CaNature communications · 2025Article
- Uncovering plant root traits and mechanisms that enable penetration, exploration, and exploitation of soil parent materials: a systematic review.Plant and soil · 2025Review
- Comparative Transcriptome Analysis Reveals the Genes and Pathways Related to Wheat Root Hair Length.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Article
- Uncovering root compaction response mechanisms: new insights and opportunities.Journal of experimental botany · 2024Article
- Genome-wide association studies of root system architecture traits in a broad collection ofFrontiers in plant science · 2024Article
- Root Hair Imaging Using Confocal Microscopy.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2024Article
- Nutrient and Microbiome-Mediated Plant-Soil Feedback in Domesticated and Wild Andropogoneae: Implications for Agroecosystems.Microorganisms · 2023Article
- Rhizosphere frame system enables nondestructive live-imaging of legume-rhizobium interactions in the soil.Journal of plant research · 2023Article
- A mechanical theory of competition between plant root growth and soil pressure reveals a potential mechanism of root penetration.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Genome wide association analysis of root hair traits in rice reveals novel genomic regions controlling epidermal cell differentiation.BMC plant biology · 2023Article
- Article
- ROOT PENETRATION INDEX 3, a major quantitative trait locus associated with root system penetrability in Arabidopsis.Journal of experimental botany · 2022Article
- Responses of Soil Rare and Abundant Sub-Communities and Physicochemical Properties after Application of Different Chinese Herb Residue Soil Amendments.Journal of microbiology and biotechnology · 2022Article
- Selection for early shoot vigour in wheat increases root hair length but reduces epidermal cell size of roots and leaves.Journal of experimental botany · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The physical role of root hairs in anchoring the root tip during soil penetration was examined. Experiments using a hairless maize mutant (Zea mays: rth3-3) and its wild-type counterpart measured the anchorage force between the primary root of maize and the soil to determine whether root hairs enabled seedling roots in artificial biopores to penetrate sandy loam soil (dry bulk density 1.0-1.5g cm(-3)). Time-lapse imaging was used to analyse root and seedling displacements in soil adjacent to a transparent Perspex interface. Peak anchorage forces were up to five times greater (2.5N cf. 0.5N) for wild-type roots than for hairless mutants in 1.2g cm(-3) soil. Root hair anchorage enabled better soil penetration for 1.0 or 1.2g cm(-3) soil, but there was no significant advantage of root hairs in the densest soil (1.5g cm(-3)). The anchorage force was insufficient to allow root penetration of the denser soil, probably because of less root hair penetration into pore walls and, consequently, poorer adhesion between the root hairs and the pore walls. Hairless seedlings took 33h to anchor themselves compared with 16h for wild-type roots in 1.2g cm(-3) soil. Caryopses were often pushed several millimetres out of the soil before the roots became anchored and hairless roots often never became anchored securely.The physical role of root hairs in anchoring the root tip may be important in loose seed beds above more compact soil layers and may also assist root tips to emerge from biopores and penetrate the bulk soil.
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