ArticlePlant physiology2025
Decreased root hydraulic traits in German winter wheat cultivars over 100 years of breeding.
Article in Plant physiology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- TaMIP1 gene breaks the dilemma of coordinating drought resistance and high yield in wheat.Plant physiology · 2026Article
- Green revolution breeding favored water conservation, but weakened water use sensitivity to rising vapor pressure deficit in US spring wheat.Plant physiology · 2026Article
- Deep soil layers show the most pronounced genetic variation in wheat root length.Plant methods · 2026Article
- Root anatomical gradients and cultivar differences underlie variation in root hydraulic properties in German winter wheat.Journal of experimental botany · 2026Article
- The Rapid Anatomics Tool (RAT): A low-cost root anatomical phenotyping platform reveals changes in root anatomy along the root axis.Plant phenomics (Washington, D.C.) · 2026Article
- Wheat growth model capturing growth-defense trade-off.Frontiers in plant science · 2026Review
- A century of winter wheat breeding decreases root hydraulic traits.Plant physiology · 2025Article
- Role of xylem in root hydraulics: Functionality and implications for drought adaptation.Quantitative plant biology · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) plays a vital role in global food security, and understanding its root traits is essential for improving water uptake under varying environmental conditions. This study investigated how over a century of breeding has influenced root morphological and hydraulic properties in 6 German winter wheat cultivars released between 1895 and 2002. Field and hydroponic experiments were used to measure root diameter, root number, branching density, and whole root system hydraulic conductance (Krs). The results showed a significant decline in root axes number and Krs with release year, while root diameter remained stable across cultivars. Additionally, dynamic functional-structural modeling using the whole-plant model CPlantBox was employed to simulate Krs development with root system growth, revealing that older cultivars consistently had higher hydraulic conductance than modern ones. The combined approach of field phenotyping and modeling provided a comprehensive view of the changes in root traits arising from breeding. These findings suggest that breeding may have unintentionally favored cultivars with smaller root systems and more conservative water uptake strategies under the high-input, high-density conditions of modern agriculture. The results of this study may inform future breeding efforts aimed at optimizing wheat root systems, helping to develop cultivars with water uptake strategies better tailored to locally changing environmental conditions.
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Registered trials
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