Root hydraulic properties: An exploration of their variability across scales.

ABSTRACT: Root hydraulic properties are key physiological traits that determine the capacity of root systems to take up water, at a specific evaporative demand. They can strongly vary among species, cultivars or even within the same genotype, but a systematic analysis of their variation across plant functional types (PFTs) is still missing. Here, we reviewed published empirical studies on root hydraulic properties at the segment-, individual root-, or root system scale and determined its variability and the main factors contributing to it. This corresponded to a total of 241 published studies, comprising 213 species, including woody and herbaceous vegetation. We observed an extremely large range of variation (of orders of magnitude) in root hydraulic properties, but this was not caused by systematic

SUBMITTER: Baca Cabrera JC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10999368 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature