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Applying hydraulic lift in an agroecosystem: forage plants with shoots removed supply water to neighboring vegetable crops

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Abstract

When a plant encounters spatially heterogeneous soil moisture within its root system, usually drier surface and moister subsurface soils, water can move between these layers through the root system, a plant process known as hydraulic lift or redistribution. The water thus transferred is available not only for the plant itself but also for its neighbors. We examined application of this process as a possible biological irrigation tool. As ‘donors’, we used perennial forage plants with their shoots removed to minimize the effect of light-interception by them on the ‘receiver’ plants growing alongside them. In a horizontally split-root experiment, where an upper container was filled with sand and a lower one with water, superior donor species could maintain the upper sand in a fully hydrated condition for several weeks, increasing stomatal conductance in the receivers. The effects were also confirmed in a water-limited agricultural field, as significant differences were found in canopy temperature and yield in neighboring crop plants in the presence or absence of donor root systems. These results suggest that deep-rooting associate plants with their shoots removed function as an irrigation tool and improve crop production in water-scarce environments.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Y. Mizumoto, K. Iwamoto and T. Furukawa for their cooperation in data acquisition. We are also grateful to F. Adachi, M. Kadowaki, N. Yasuda and T. Yamane for their help with the field work. This research was supported financially by the Industrial Technology Research Grant Program in 2005 from the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) of Japan, and in part by KAKENHI (17688015, 20380178).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), JICA Tanzania Office, P. O. Box, 9450, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

    Nobuhito Sekiya

  2. Experimental Farm, Faculty of Agriculture, Yamaguchi University, Yoshida, Yamaguchi, 753-8515, Japan

    Hideki Araki

  3. Laboratory of Crop Science, Graduate School of Bioagricultural Sciences, Nagoya University, Chikusa, Nagoya, Aichi, 464-8601, Japan

    Katsuya Yano

Authors
  1. Nobuhito Sekiya
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  2. Hideki Araki
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  3. Katsuya Yano
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Correspondence to Nobuhito Sekiya.

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Responsible Editor: Hans Lambers.

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Online Resource 1

A schematic of a large split-root container (PDF 204 kb)

Online Resource 2

A schematic of the planting arrangement in the field experiment (PDF 248 kb)

Online Resource 3

A schematic of the hypothesis tested in the field experiment (PDF 206 kb)

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Sekiya, N., Araki, H. & Yano, K. Applying hydraulic lift in an agroecosystem: forage plants with shoots removed supply water to neighboring vegetable crops. Plant Soil 341, 39–50 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-010-0581-1

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