A new model for optimizing the water acquisition of root hydraulic architectures over full crop cycles

摘要

Drought stress is one of the most significant environmental stress in agriculture worldwide and is even expected to become more and more severe in many regions of the globe. In this context, the concept of ideotypes (plant with ideal traits that is expected to yield a greater quantity or quality of product when developed as a cultivar) opens new avenues for breeding as shown by the results of plant model simulations. However currently root system ideotypes lack quantitative traits and moreover cannot perform optimally in every single environment. We present here a physically-based model of the water flow in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum working at the plant scale capable of efficiently simulating the root water uptake of growing crops over full crop cycles as well as other environmental flow (rain, irrigation, evapotranspiration). It is adapted to discriminate genotypes/ideotypes performance in any environment. In a simulation study we analyze the ability of maize root cultivars to maintain their transpiration under two management practices in two different environments.