ArticleScientific reports2019
Roots compact the surrounding soil depending on the structures they encounter.
Article in Scientific reports, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Long-Term Organic Amendment Systems Are Associated with Pore-Aggregate Structure, Root Traits, and Labile Organic Carbon Allocation in a Brown Soil.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Observing the invisible: X-ray CT for plant-microbe interactions.The New phytologist · 2026Review
- Early signals of water limitations begin at the root-soil interface: linking rhizosphere drying to water uptake decline.The New phytologist · 2026Article
- Root-Pore Interactions, the Underestimated Driver for Rhizosphere Structure and Rhizosheath Development.Plant, cell & environment · 2026Article
- Effects of different irrigation amounts on soil structure in newly cultivated land on the Loess Plateau.PloS one · 2025Article
- Composition and metabolism of microbial communities in soil pores.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Studying root-environment interactions in structured microdevices.Journal of experimental botany · 2023Article
- Cultivar-dependent differences in tuber growth cause increased soil resistance in potato fields.Frontiers in plant science · 2023Article
- Roots' Drought Adaptive Traits in Crop Improvement.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Deconstructing the root system of grasses through an exploration of development, anatomy and function.Plant, cell & environment · 2022Review
- How Do Roots Interact with Layered Soils?Journal of imaging · 2022Article
- Harnessing belowground processes for sustainable intensification of agricultural systems.Plant and soil · 2022Article
- Cover crop influence on pore size distribution and biopore dynamics: Enumerating root and soil faunal effects.Frontiers in plant science · 2022Article
- Imaging local soil kinematics during the first days of maize root growth in sand.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Pulse Root Ideotype for Water Stress in Temperate Cropping System.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Bridging Microbial Functional Traits With Localized Process Rates at Soil Interfaces.Frontiers in microbiology · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Contradictory evidence exists regarding whether and to which extend roots change soil structure in their vicinity. Here we attempt to reconcile disparate views allowing for the two-way interaction between soil structure and root traits, i.e. changes in soil structure due to plants and changes in root growth due to soil structure. Porosity gradients extending from the root/biopore surface into the bulk soil were investigated with X-ray µCT for undisturbed soil samples from a field chronosequence as well as for a laboratory experiment with Zea mays growing into three different bulk densities. An image analysis protocol was developed, which enabled a fast analysis of the large sample pool (n > 300) at a resolution of 19 µm. Lab experiment showed that growing roots only compact the surrounding soil if macroporosity is low and dominated by isolated pores. When roots can grow into a highly connected macropore system showing high connectivity the rhizosphere is more porous compared to the bulk soil. A compaction around roots/biopores in the field chronosequence was only observed in combination with high root/biopore length densities. We conclude that roots compact the rhizosphere only if the initial soil structure does not offer a sufficient volume of well-connected macropores.
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