Group of 5 people in Leipzig

Awesome to see @guillaumelobet.bsky.social @benjamindelory.bsky.social Jeff and Elsa at the International Society of Root Research meeting in Leipzig. All roots all the time is so much fun! Learned a ton. #ISRR12 #ISSR24

Corentin Maslard made a very nice presentation on effect oh heat and water stress on maize roots and microbial communities. Huge amount of work with multiomics. Roots exudates are the most affected. Heat stress have a mild effect, combined stresses are more than a sum. #ISRR12

Fabrice Bauget switch to something more molecular. He showed their work on a model predicting water horizontal flow in the root #ISRR12

Clément Saint Cast showed a method to 3D scan and model pine tree root system. The digitalized and modeled roots were very promising results #ISRR12

Charlotte White presented works done in the field and without soil in a lab early growth system. Some traits correlate nicely between the 2 very different systems. Plenty more results to come to confirm and elaborate #ISRR12

Marcus Griffiths presented his work on the cover crop pennycress, either in field (with root washing and scanning the roots), and in mesocosm. In the field, they saw a large effect of accessions on root length, with QTLs, and a - correlation between root length and density #ISRR12

Katarzyna Retzer presented RaPID-chamber, an automatisée phenotyping system made with a RaspberryPi, a camera, infrared lights and a box, imaging a plant grown in soil in a petridish. The whole system can be built for less than 200 euros. « Welcome to Rootflix! » #ISRR12

We entered the world of signaling today with the great talk by Malcolm Bennett. How do plants sense water? The main and somehow universal signal is ABA, whether the water stress is drought or compaction. It either repress lateral roots or induce barriers formation #ISRR12

In Takuya Koyama’s setup, substrate was divided in four and P distributed uniformly or more in a quarter of it. P uptake was more efficient when it was distributed in one patch, with a higher concentration. Roots branch more there without increase in total root length #ISRR12

Frederik van der Bom shows the results of his 4 years PostDoc in Australia, working on the interaction between root architecture and P uptake. The main thing is that the root should be able to reach the spots where P is available, depending of field management #ISRR12

Fabio Trevisan talks about citrate uptake in tomato under P and Fe deficiency. It seems to be favorable in -P, not really in -Fe #ISRR12

Ricardo Giehl showed results obtained in the impressive @leibnizipk.bsky.social Phenosphere. Barley grown in low N with high N patches showed a higher branching in the patches, but total length os not affected. Screening a collection showed a large variability of this N plasticity. #ISRR12

Stephanie Klein presented a nice study on root angle in maize. Within the NAM population, some lines have steep or shallow roots, others are responsive to N. They identify a new QTL for root angle and did RNAseq, but H2 of responsiveness is too low for mapping #ISRR12

Doris Vetterlein presents the results obtained by a project where partners studied the same plants and question with their different approaches. Using different scales allows getting a more complete picture #ISRR12

Tim Brodribb starts the day presenting the link between transpiration, stomata closure, xylem cavitation and water potential. Are roots the weak link? Not really #ISRR12

Larry York is now presenting @RhizoVision , a free software to analyse root traits #ISRR12
It’s a great soft, but I have no idea what happened to the roots in tundra talk I came to see…

Nicolas Tyborski showed that changes in microbial communities are higher with landraces and in wet conditions compared to elite varieties and drought #ISRR12

Maria Hernandez Soriano showed use their work on a collection of wheat. Different accession have different biological nitrogen inhibition, and QTLs are linked to it. Grown in several environment the microbes guilds recruited are different #ISRR12

Tania Galindo discussed the interaction between root architecture and microbial communities. Microbial communities vary with soil depth and the part of the root system they are in contact with. #ISRR12

Elisa Taschen showed results on the effect of varieties mixtures on yield under stress. The mixtures have a strong effect under stress, either positive or negative depending of the varieties mixed. The trait explaining it could be linked to root plasticity #ISRR12

Cagla Eroglu described her experiments on the effect of competition on root exudate. The competitor changes the type of exudates and those exudates change the root architecture of the competitor #ISRR12

Lixing Yuan presented his work of genetics of root angle in maize. In modern cultivars root angle become steeper to accommodate for density. QTLs behind it were found. But also genes that explain how lower light result in steeper roots #ISRR12

Alexandre Grondin showed us results on pearl millet plasticity, controlled by GxE effects. In particular metaxylem traits are controlled by those kind of effects. They identified a strong QTL for this xylem plasticity on chr1. #ISRR12

Florian Fort discussed about the effect of domestication on roots traits in durum wheat. Domesticated have a higher tolerance to competition, a higher plasticity for tissue density. Higher exploration on wilds seems to be more of a suffering trait. #ISRR12

Cristina McBride presented her work on Rhizoshead, the interface between root and soil. She found a strong effect of the species. Rhizoshead increase with root biomass and length and density of root hairs. Rye have all that and is then good at binding soil #ISRR12

Laurent Laplaze showed results on pearl millet yield under drought. Surprisingly a bigger xylem is correlated to a better yield. Indeed, in potting soil bigger xylem means higher transpiration, but in sandy soil, like where millet is cultivated, it’s the contrary!
#ISRR12

Jagdeep Singh Sidhu presented the impact of polyploidy on rootS. DNA and proteins need P and N, respectively. But there is less P and N in polyploidy wheat roots. That’s because there is less bigger cells. Also, hexaploid roots have worse soil penetration, as root tip is blunt #ISRR12

Franciska de Vries kicks off the day at #ISRR12. She presented an impressive set of large experiments that shows how root-microbes interaction allows plants to better handle drought by beneficial microbes recruitments. Plants whose strategy is less collaborative are more susceptible

Amelia Henry demonstrated the rice breeding pipeline at IRRI and its interaction with basic research, in particular on drought. I will keep that quote of a colleague breeder of hers: “GWAS is a good place to start but a terrible place to end” #ISRR12

Toru Fujiwara presented nutritropism. It is induced by NH4 and enhanced by phosphate and requires AUX1 #ISRR12