Facilities are not good for root studies of crop. How can we do root studies efficient ways to conduct root studies without good facilities.
By "facilities", do you mean a rhizotron? It depends what kind of study you want to do and how much space (and plant material) you have. I have studied plant roots growing plants in Turface MVP, a calcined high-fired clay granule that washes off roots easily. The sampling is destructive, though; you can't follow one root system over time. And roots may grow differently in Turface than they would in a heavy loam soil, for instance.
Root studies are quite technical due to tenderness and breaking tendency of insitu roots. You can use hollow pipes to grow your plants and observe or study roots. Also roots can be observed in a water medium as with hydroponics as a non destructive method. These two techniques may avoid damage and the need for complex equipment.
Root study of plants may be possible in a very minimum laboratory facility. May Physical observation after washing with water such as biomass branching, growth pattern, etc. Using graph paper may be the calculated length, through image processing may obtain much information
You can just dig up root samples, dry them and make analyses from the dry matter :)
How about damage to the root mass? It will suffer much mechanical injury.
Dear Girija Prasad Patnaik , I worked for a small Ozone Manufacturer company as a technical director of R&D. I had limited financial resources to investigate, but I did the best I can, and my imagination was very important to do it. On the sides of some strawberry banks, I placed some methacrylate sheets held in place with iron bars. I recommend pressing the soil against the methacrylate to avoid the air gaps that can be seen in the picture attached. It was still very useful to see the differences between treatments.
Use of Pot, hydroponic, hollo pipe but all of them are different media. Artificiality always affect on plant root growth. So specify growth medium in methodology of your result.
Emmanuel Bassey Effa no, it is a recognised technique to dig samples of roots, for analysis, of specified dimension. I did this for my masters degree in wetland ecogy :)
Thanks Andrew. I also did for my M.Sc in root studies. One of the draw backs was mechanical damage.
Use of poly bags filled with the friable sand-rich soil mixture (loosely packed) for planting the experimental material followed by dismantling the bag and soil carefully by soaking the rhizosphere in the bucket or tub filled with more water till it becomes loose and sand-rich soil detaches from the surface of the root system.
Quite a useful contribution. Practicable with minimum mechanical damage if the worker is patient enough to avoid wounding the root system.
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