A Digitization and Visualization Procedure for 3D Wheat Root System Architecture in Rice–Wheat Rotation

A method consisting of soil core with undisturbed sample of root architecture, digitizer and commercial software was developed to visualize wheat root system architecture (RSA) in a field experiment. At first, root-zone soil was excavated and wheat RSA was digitized in every 5-mm-thick soil layers. By then, the 3D root morphological data were re-integrated by Pro-E software, where 3D models of wheat RSAs could be reconstructed, scaled and calculated. Results revealed markedly distorted morphological structures of wheat axial roots in both curvature and helical morphology. Scaled RSA models also revealed severe restrictions on overall RSAs, illustrating the intense constraint of root topology by the heterogeneous environment. Time-series presentation of RSAs clearly displayed the fine structural details of root morphological dynamics, indicating that a high accuracy of data had been achieved for field crop physiology. Laminated digitization combined with Pro-E modelling was featured as a deterministic, data-driven and model-assisted procedure, which was particularly suitable for crop RSAs in field. Wheat RSA dynamics and temporal variations of 3D root topology illustration could be realized by undisturbed sampling, digitizing and modelling method for field-state crops with fine and fibrous root systems. It had potential to provide a means of illustrating the influence of anisotropy of the soil environment.