Author(s)

Grzegorz Jozefaciuk, Malgorzata Lukowska, Justyna Szerement

Institute of Agrophysics of Polish Academy of Sciences, Lublin, Poland..

Background and Aims: Structure and composition of plant roots surfaces are extremely complicated. Water vapor adsorption/desorption isotherm is a powerful tool to characterize such surfaces. The aim of this paper is to present theoretical approach for calculating roots surface parameters as adsorption energy, distribution of surface adsorption centers, as well as roots geometric and structure parameters as surface fractal dimension, nanopore sizes and size distributions on example of experimental isotherms of roots of barley taken from the literature. This approach was up to date practically not applied to study plant roots. Methods: Simplest tools of theoretical analysis of adsorption/desorption isotherms are applied. Results: Parameters characterizing energy of water binding, surface complexity and nanopore system of the studied roots were calculated and compared to these of the soils. Some possible applications of root surface parameters to study plant-soil interactions are outlined. Conclusions: Physicochemical surface parameters may be important for characterizing root surface properties, their changes in stress conditions, as well as for study and model plant processes. Physicochemical and geometrical properties of plant roots differ from these of the soils.

Adsorption Energy; Adsorption/Desorption Isotherm; Fractal Dimension; Nanopore; Plant Roots

G. Jozefaciuk, M. Lukowska and J. Szerement, "Determination of Energetic and Geometric Properties of Plant Roots Specific Surface from Adsorption/Desorption Ishoterm," American Journal of Plant Sciences, Vol. 4 No. 8, 2013, pp. 1554-1561. doi: 10.4236/ajps.2013.48187.