Use vermiculite

medium . Horticultural vermiculite has the excellent property of improving soil aeration while retaining moisture and nutrients to feed roots, cuttings and seeds for faster, maximum growth.BEST

Dear Giulia,

I would use a typical soil used for corn cultivation in your region. This way will avoid a lot of questions from the reviewers.

Hi my dears:

Whats Potential Environmental risk index?

Environmental risk can be defined through equation cited as the extent of pollution of a given ecosystem as predicting the extent to which a particular ecosystem is contaminated as a result of the accumulation of waste from multiple sources depending upon the human activity, and following up on whether it allows for the continuation of living life or becomes a threat to the state of natural ecological balance on the ground 1�ݶ���

I agree with Giulia's answer! You can use soil. You can also use sand as a substrate if you are going to water with a nutrient solution.

I agree with Olga's answer. The bst thing it would be to use a typical soil. I do not know if you are going to apply a soil or pot experiment. For my experience, pot experiments with soil are not so representative because all the handling processes destroy soil structure which becomes very compact. It is better to use pot experiments when you want to assess root morphology parameters.

In any case, you also have to consider that corn is a field crop which develops a long root system. So a pot experiment will raise a lot of questions by reviewers in case you want to publish your results (unless you use very big containers or lysimeters).

I hope you find useful this information.

When dealing with field crops such as corn, field experiments are best suited to simulate reality rather than laboratory experiments

Dear Giulia

I agree with the answer of Olga Bykova . I would like also to draw your attention that treatments of drought usually are associated with increasing EC of root zone. So pay attention to the EC of your irrigation water and the rate of salt accumulation during your experiment.