Plant roots: a lever to modulate the impact of water deficits on crops and to improve water management in agrosystems | Utiliser les racines pour moduler les impacts des déficits en eau et améliorer la gestion de l’eau dans les agrosystèmes

International audience

英语. Plants, through their root systems, are soil engineers capable of altering the biological, chemical and physical properties of the soil they colonize. However, while soil properties are generally well considered for their impact on plants (water/nutrient uptake, growth and yield), the plant action on soil properties through its root system, and the feedback loop, are much less investigated. A large part of these plant-soil interactions takes place in the rhizosphere: the small zone of soil surrounding the roots impacted by their activity, which is a hotspot of biological activity sustained by the supply of carbon by roots (exudates, mucilage) comprising specific polymeric compounds. We here argue that the root/rhizosphere effect on the soil could be a lever for acting on crop tolerance to water deficit, showing a few examples of our recent works. More globally, considering cropping systems and rotations, root systems could be a tool for managing soil hydraulic properties in the view of optimizing the water balance at the field level (runoff/infiltration partition, soil water storage, drainage and groundwater recharge).

法语. Les plantes, au travers de leur système racinaire sont un acteur majeur dans l’évolution des propriétés biologiques, chimiques et physiques du sol qu’elles colonisent. Une forte partie de ces évolutions se déroule dans le sol proche des racines, la rhizosphère, zone dans laquelle les interactions racines/micro-organismes/sol sont intenses. Au travers de leurs travaux récents, les auteurs montrent que la rhizosphère est un levier de tolérance au déficit hydrique des cultures et que plus globalement, les systèmes racinaires peuvent être un outil pour la gestion de l’hydrologie des parcelles cultivées