Dear Professor(s),
I am doing review about maize root length but the most of papers do not provide this information. The papers usually provide root length density. I want to calculate the root length using root length density.
- So I need to know how root length density (RLD or Lv) is calculated?
- What is the equation of the RLD?
- What I need to know to calculate RLD?
- Is the RLD an average?
Hi Teruo,
Here is the link to the paper of Pérez-Harguindeguy et al. (2013). There the authors made an extensive review of measurement of plant functional trait. Among them is root length. This might be basic, but will help to find related work on what you're looking.
The link:
http://macroecointern.dk/pdf-reprints/P%E9rez-Harguindeguy_AusJBot_2013.pdf
Hope it helps,
Gabriela
To calculate the density must have a known volume and then measure the roots length . Then, you split length on the volume. RLD = cm/cm3
Six years back I had proposed that RLD should be considered as direction dependent. RLD is (total length of roots in a volume/ volume ). The dimension of RLD is hence m/m^3 = m^-2. If we consider vetiver to have vertical roots alone (and no lateral roots) you can consider a small vertical cylinder with height h and base a circle with area a. Count the number of roots in the area a. Let it be n. The length of roots will be n*h metres and volume of the cylinder is h*a m^3. Hence the RLD will be n*h/(h*a) = n/a ! So the RLD can be measured easily as the number of roots in an area/ size of area. The RLD measured this way is a vector. The paper where I proposed such RLD vector is attached. Se page 9. Hope this helps.
You get to do root sampling at given determined depth using 100cm3 core samplers. Wash and air dry them. spread the roots on paper grid of (4/pie) by (4/pie). count the number of roots crossing the grids. Then RLD=N/100cm3...unit cm/cm3 of core sample. I think it can help.
The root length density in any direction can be calculated as the number of roots in an area (2 d surface) perpendicular to the direction. For lateral roots, the direction is parallel to the soil surface. The area where you have to count the roots will be then perpendicular to the soil surface area.
My dear Teruo Matos Maruyama the formula used by researchers (Moreno et al., 2005; Tahir et al., 2007) in which we have used for the study of roots in Elaeis guineensis and Tectona grandis. Greetings, I hope it is helpful.
RLD: Root length (km3) / Volume of soil (m3)
Sample the roots in a cube or cylinder with a given volume, taking certain depths (0-10 cm, 10-20 cm ...) remove the roots, wash them and then dry them in an oven at 65 ° C for 72 hours. Then, on graph paper, put the roots that you obtain and put it linearly, accommodating all the roots and measure their length either in cm, m or km, as the case may be, then calculate the volume of your cylinder, cube or monolith. As a final point with the equation I sent you above, you calculate the RLD.
Alberto Córdova Sanchez
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