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Articles

Resistance to Water Flow in the Sorghum Plant ¹

Joe T. Ritchie

Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, Blackland Research Center, Temple, Texas 76501, United States Department of Agriculture, Science and Education Administration, Agricultural Research, Grassland, Texas 76501, Soil and Water Research Laboratory, Temple, Texas 76501

Knowledge of the location and magnitude of the resistance to water flow in a plant is fundamental for describing whole plant response to water stress. The reported magnitudes of these resistances vary widely, principally because of the difficulty of measuring water potential within the plant. A number of interrelated experiments are described in which the water potential of a covered, nontranspiring leaf attached to a transpiring sorghum plant (Sorghum bicolor [L.] Moench) was used as a measure of the potential at the root-shoot junction. This allowed a descriptive evaluation of plant resistance to be made.

The water potentials of a covered, nontranspiring leaf and a nonabsorbing root in solution, both attached to an otherwise actively transpiring and absorbing plant, were found to be similar. This supported the hypothesis that covered leaf water potential was equilibrating at a point shared by the vascular connections of both leaves and roots, i.e. the nodal complex of the root-shoot junction or crown. The difference in potential between a covered and exposed leaf together with calculated individual leaf transpiration rates were used to evaluate the resistance between the plant crown and the exposed leaf lamina called the connection resistance. There was an apparent decrease in the connection resistance as the transpiration rate increased; this is qualitatively explained as plant capacitance.

Assuming that the covered leaf water potential was equal to that in the root xylem at the point of water absorption in the experimental plants with relatively short root axes, calculated radial root resistances were strongly dependent on the transpiration rate. For plants with moderate to high transpiration rates the roots had a slightly larger resistance than the shoots.

¹ Contribution from the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, Texas A&M University, in cooperation with the United States Department of Agriculture, Science and Education Administration, Agricultural Research.