I want to estimate water movement from roots to stem and leaves. Is their any practical and simple methods to estimate the water movement without using Isotopes?
Maybe you could measure quantities of water poured onto the soil pot of a plant, and how much it retains, or how fast it drinks it, or until the soil is dry. Maybe you could measure the difference in leaves from well watered plants and dry plants, to determine the mass difference that comes from water, as an estimate.
Maybe you could put a known plant nutrient, dissolved in the water, and measure uptake of that presence in the leaves, such as phosphorus, or phosphate, or a form of nitrogen, but you would want to determine first how much is absorbed from water or how much is already in the plant normally.
An issue I can think of related to measuring water uptake is that plants breathe the air and either release or absorb water this way, through the stomata, I think. Plants may also absorb water from fungus. There may be soil humus that holds and slowly makes water accessible to the plants roots. Another complexity may be the routes that water takes in plants, and determining that, or reactions water is involved in, which may make it difficult to trace, but maybe this could lead to another way to estimate water uptake by illuminating an effect of water that can be measured.
This is a very interesting question.
Thank you Beckwith for nice elaborations. Seems it needs detailed study for measuring the water movement.
Thank you Rahman, Potometer is ok but through this we can measure transpiration rate under controlled condition. I need to study this under field condition.
Thank Dr. Shakhatreh, for sharing article and it found very interesting. Thank you
Hi, maybe this article can help you.
A new stem hygrometer, corrected for temperature gradients and calibrated against the pressure bomb
In:
Plant cell and environment (1984) 7, 693-697.
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