The experiment was carried out at the Experimental Station belonging to Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences. In the autumn of 2008 the distribution of root system for nine-year-old apple trees cv. ‘Jonagored’ on M9 rootstock was evaluated. The tress were planted at spacing 3,5 x 0,5 m (5714 trees/ha) in two different ways: traditionally – into hole, and in the ridges. Plant-ing in ridges consists in setting trees on the top of the ground, fastening the trees to the rows of wire and hilling the soil up around their root system. The trees were irrigated by drip irrigation system. Irrigation was applied on the base of tensiometer indications. On purpose to determine the distribution of the roots the method of soil profile was used (Böhm, 1985). The method of soil profile was modified by taking digital photos of soil with roots, instead putting the roots by hand on transparent foil. The studies were prosecuted on three selected trees in each treatment, in vertical soil profile at 1m wide and 1,2 m deep. Planting in ridge combined with irrigation affected more intensive produc-ing of fine roots (ø < 1 mm), in comparison with control trees, planted ...
The aim of the study was to assess the root system distribution of two Catalpa species - Catalpa bignonioides and Catalpa ovata - grown in row plantings on light soil under subsurface drip irrigation. The soil profile method by Oskamp was used to analyse the vertical and horizontal root system structure, including root diameter classes. The experiment was conducted in a split-plot design with two irrigation treatments (W1 - irrigation at -40 kPa soil water tension; W2 - at -20 kPa) and compared with a non-irrigated control (W0). For both species, most roots were located within the 0-30 cm soil layer; however, C. ovata developed a deeper root system, reaching 60 cm under intensive irrigation (W2). Irrigation increased the number of fine roots (<1 mm), which dominated the root structure and accounted for more than 60% of all roots. Both species showed a clear response to the applied irrigation variants, with a stronger effect observed in C. ovata. The results confirm that subsurface drip irrigation promotes root development in the surface layer and increases the total number of roots, which may support tree survival and stability in light soils and water-deficient conditions. ...
