Effect of Crop Root on Soil Water Retentivity and Movement.docVIP

American Journal of Plant Sciences, 2012, 3, 1782-1787 /10.4236/ajps.2012.312A218 Published Online December 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/ajps) Effect of Crop Root on Soil Water Retentivity and Movement Kozue Yuge , Keiki Shigematsu , Mitsumasa Anan , Shinogi Yoshiyuki 1* 2 3 1 1 Faculty of Agriculture, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan; Graduate School of Bioresource and Bioenvironment Science, Kyushu 2 University, Fukuoka, Japan; Takasaki Sogo Consultant Co., Ltd., Kurume, Japan. * Email: yuge@bpes.kyushu-u.ac.jp 3 Received September 13 , 2012; revised October 18 , 2012; accepted November 14 , 2012 th th th ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to clarify the effect of crop root on soil water retentivity and movement to improve the crop growth environment and irrigation efficiency. To simulate soil water movement considering the crop root effect on the physical properties of soil, a numerical model describing the soil water and heat transfers was introduced. Cultiva- tion experiments were conducted to clarify the effect of the crop root on soil water retentivity and verify the accuracy of the numerical model. The relationship between soil water retentivity and the root content of soil samples was clarified by soil water retention curves. The soil water content displayed a high value with increasing crop root content in the high volumetric water content zone. The experimental results indicated that the saturated water content increased with the crop root content because of the porosity formed by the crop root. The differences of the soil water retentivity be- came smaller when the value of the matric potential was over pF 1.5. To verify t