The overlooked effects of environmental impacts on root: Shoot ratio in experiments and soil-crop models

Process-based soil-crop models are becoming increasingly important to estimate the effects of agricultural management practices and climate change impacts on soil organic carbon (C). Although work has been done on the effects of crop type and climate on the root:shoot (biomass) ratio, there is a gap in research on the effects of specific environmental or management conditions such as drought, temperature, nutrient limitation, elevated CO2 or tillage on the root:shoot ratio and thus, atmospheric C sequestration. In this study, we quantified the effects of these factors on the root:shoot biomass ratio by reviewing the current literature, presented common simulation approaches and performed model simulations using different examples. Finally, we identified different research gaps with respect to the root:shoot ratio with the aim of better estimating and predicting atmospheric C sequestration. A predominantly positive response of the root:shoot ratio was observed in case of elevated CO2 (~12 %), low soil N levels (~44 %), and drought (~14 %). Soil tillage did not affect root:shoot ratio of the major field crops but increased it by ~15 % in case of wheat. There are only few field studies on air temperature increase and the results vary widely (mean − 48 %). The responses of tested models to the mentioned effects root:shoot ratio were slightly positive in case of CO2 elevation (0 to 2 %) and tillage (0 to 8 %), slightly to clearly positive in the case of drought and N limitation depending on the model (1 to 40 %), and very variable in case of the air temperature scenarios. Our study reveals large model uncertainty (especially on temperature effects), particularly for below ground processes that highlight knowledge gaps in simulating root:shoot ratio. We advocate for the need of more model-oriented specific experiments under abiotic stresses to help model improvement. Such research effort would enable more robust and reliable root:shoot ratio simulations.