Distribution of Coarse and Fine Roots of Theobroma Cacao and Shade Tree
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Distribution of coarse and fine roots of Theobroma cacao and shade tree Inga edulis in a cocoa plantation Pekka Nygren, Humberto Leblanc, Miaoer Lu, Cristino Gómez Luciano To cite this version: Pekka Nygren, Humberto Leblanc, Miaoer Lu, Cristino Gómez Luciano. Distribution of coarse and fine roots of Theobroma cacao and shade tree Inga edulis in a cocoa plantation. Annals of Forest Science, Springer Nature (since 2011)/EDP Science (until 2010), 2013, 70 (3), pp.229-239. 10.1007/s13595- 012-0250-z. hal-01201468 HAL Id: hal-01201468 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01201468 Submitted on 17 Sep 2015 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Annals of Forest Science (2013) 70:229–239 DOI 10.1007/s13595-012-0250-z ORIGINAL PAPER Distribution of coarse and fine roots of Theobroma cacao and shade tree Inga edulis in a cocoa plantation Pekka Nygren & Humberto A. Leblanc & Miaoer Lu & Cristino A. Gómez Luciano Received: 8 June 2012 /Accepted: 6 November 2012 /Published online: 23 November 2012 # INRA and Springer-Verlag France 2012 Abstract & Aims We studied the root distributions of cocoa and Inga & Context Cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) is often cultivated edulis Mart. (inga) in an agroforestry plantation in the hu- below legume shade trees, but root interactions between the mid tropics of Costa Rica. species are not well known. The first step in understanding & Methods Fine roots were sampled by soil coring, and a fractal these interactions is the description of spatial root system root architecture model parameterised with data from partial root distribution of cocoa and shade trees. excavations was used for determining coarse root distribution. & Results Fine root length in the 0–50 cm soil layer was 26,762 and 22,026 kmha−1 for cocoa and inga, respectively, with 24 % and 23 % of fine root length of cocoa and inga, respectively, in – Handling Editor: Michael Tausz the 0 2 cm layer. Horizontally, root distributions of the two species with cocoa at 3×3 m and inga at 9×9 m spacing Contribution of the co-authors P. Nygren: participation in all phases of the work, including planning of the experimental work, supervision overlapped strongly, while inga did not cover all points at of sampling, data analyses and writing the manuscript. 18×18 m spacing. H.A. Leblanc: participation in all phases of the work, including planning & Conclusion Both species seem to efficiently capture of the experimental work, supervision of sampling and data analyses. nutrients released from the litter layer on the soil surface, M. Lu: design, programming and parameterisation of the FracRoot model version used in this study. and nutrient leaching in shaded cocoa plantations is unlike- C.A. Gómez Luciano: fine root sampling and analysis of fine root data. ly. The proximity of root systems may facilitate N exchange P. Nygren and H.A. Leblanc made the revision of an earlier manuscript between the N2-fixing inga and cocoa, but competition for version, including determination of the relationship between stem basal other nutrients is likely. diameter and root characteristics. M. Lu and C.A. Gómez Luciano read and accepted the corrected manuscript. Keywords Agroforestry . Fractal networks . Organic P. Nygren farming . Resource sharing . Root architecture . Root length Department of Forest Sciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 27, 00014 Helsinki, Finland H. A. Leblanc : C. A. Gómez Luciano 1 Introduction EARTH University, Las Mercedes de Guácimo, Costa Rica Agroforestry has been defined as a land management system M. Lu that intends to optimise the benefits from biophysical inter- ESRI Support Service, 380 New York Street, Redlands, CA 92373, USA actions created when trees are combined with crops and/or domestic animals (Gold et al. 2000). Many of these interac- Present Address: tions occur belowground: trees and crops may either share or * P. Nygren ( ) compete for water and nutrients. Although facilitative inter- Finnish Society of Forest Science, P.O. Box 18, 01301 Vantaa, Finland actions occur, e.g. via soil C increment by tree root turnover or e-mail: [email protected] physical improvement of compacted soil by strong tree roots (Schroth 1999), most research has emphasised the potential Present Address: competition for soil resources (Jose et al. 2000; Lehmann et al. C. A. Gómez Luciano Fondo Grande, 1998). Root architecture and distribution of fine root length Loma de Cabrera, Dominican Republic are important determinants of the sharing of soil resources 230 P. Nygren et al. between a tree and a crop in agroforestry because they define estimates were considerably improved by inclusion of a coarse the soil volume available for the component species. This root turnover factor (Nygren et al. 2009). volume will be called the influence area of a plant in this The aim of this study was to describe the distribution of contribution. Extraradical mycelium of arbuscular mycorrhi- both coarse and fine roots of cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) zal fungi may largely increase the soil volume available for and the legume shade tree Inga edulis Mart. (hereafter inga) nutrient uptake by accessing soil pores too small for penetra- in an organically grown cocoa plantation under humid trop- tion by plant roots. However, arbuscular mycorrhizae do not ical conditions. The specific objectives were to test the significantly increase the influence area of a root system FracRoot model in an agroforestry system with two woody because the extraradical hyphae concentrate close to the host components and determine the vertical distribution of the root (Smith and Read 2008). fine roots of the component species. The results are dis- It has been hypothesised that tree roots tend to be deeper cussed in the context of soil resource sharing. than crop roots, thus forming a safety net that captures nutrients leaching through the crop-rooting zone (van Noordwijk et al. 1996). Many trees used in agroforestry systems with annual 2 Materials and methods crops in the dry (Jonsson et al. 1988; Lehmann et al. 1998)and sub-humid tropics (Schroth and Zech 1995) appear to be 2.1 Fine root sampling deeper rooted than associated crops. In systems of perennial crops and shade trees, however, all fine roots seem to concen- The fieldwork was conducted in the Academic Farm of trateinthetopsoilinthehumid(MuñozandBeer2001)and EARTH University in Guácimo in the Caribbean coastal plain sub-humid tropics (Dossa et al. 2008). Unfortunately, tree and of Costa Rica (10°10′ N, 83°37′ W, 64 ma.s.l.). Average crop fine roots were not distinguished in the latter studies and annual rainfall in 1996–2009 was 3,694 mm, distributed fairly the conclusion of tree and crop using the same soil horizons evenly throughout a year, and mean annual temperature was was derived indirectly from comparison of different systems or 25.0 °C. The cocoa plantation of the farm is situated on from coarse root distribution. uniform soils (an andic humitropept with pH in water of Coarse roots form the skeleton of the root system of a tree, approximately 4.7) and it is divided into four plots of approx- in which the nutrient-absorbing fine roots are attached. It has imately 1 ha each. Two organically managed plots with inga been proposed that the soil volume occupied by the coarse shade were used in this study. Average total N concentration in roots of a tree would define the influence area of the tree the plantation was 5.49, 2.61, and 1.92 mg [N]g−1 [soil] in the (Kalliokoski et al. 2010; Nygren et al. 2009). This hypothesis layers 0–10, 11–25, and 26–50 cm, respectively. The respec- is based on the assumption that fine roots do not grow far from tive Olsen-extractable P concentrations were 12.4, 1.79, and the coarse transport roots that supply carbohydrates for their 2.02 μg[P]g−1 [soil] and bulk densities were 0.68, 0.84, and growth, as implied by the short length of distal roots of several 0.85 kgdm−3 (Mogollón Frasca 2007). Variation between tree species (Atger and Edelin 1994a). However, actual spatial plots with respect of pH, bulk density, and N and P concen- distribution of fine roots within the influence area may be trations was negligible. Cocoa was periodically pruned and quitevariable(AtgerandEdelin1994b). Thus, it is important the trees had the same size in all plots of the plantation to study both the coarse root architecture and the fine root irrespective of age and slight management differences. distribution for understanding the conditions for soil resource Fine roots were sampled in a plot established in 1992 and sharing in an ecosystem (Tobin et al. 2007). managed organically since 1997. The shade trees were Soil core sampling is a generally accepted method for de- thinned from 9×9 to 18×18 m spacing in December 2005. termining fine root mass and length in soil (van Noordwijk Cocoa was planted at 3×3 m spacing and naturally thinned 1993; van Noordwijk et al. 1996). Coarse roots are spatially to 680 trees ha−1 by mortality. At the time of fine root much scarcer and, thus, soil coring would require a very high sampling, the mean basal diameter (0.5 m height) of ingas number of samples. Complete excavation of the coarse roots of was 36.8 cm (standard deviation [SD]08.5 cm).