Abstract
To obtain nutrients mineralised from organic matter in the soil, plants have to respond to its heterogeneous distribution. We measured the timing of nitrogen uptake by wheat from a localised, 15N labelled organic residue in soil, as well as the timing of changes in root length density. We calculated the rates of N uptake per unit root length (inflows) for roots growing through the residue and for the whole root system. A stimulated local inflow appeared to be the main mechanism of exploitation of the residue N during the first five days of exploitation. 8% of the N that the plants would ultimately obtain from the residue was captured in this period. Roots then proliferated in the residue. This, together with a rapidly declining N inflow, contributed to the capture, over the next seven days, of 63% of the N that the plants derived from the residue. After that time, massive root proliferation occurred in the residue, but relatively little further N was captured.
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van Vuuren, M.M.I., Robinson, D. & Griffiths, B.S. Nutrient inflow and root proliferation during the exploitation of a temporally and spatially discrete source of nitrogen in soil. Plant Soil 178, 185–192 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00011582
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00011582