Investigation of electrical anisotropy as a root phenotyping parameter: Numerical study with root water uptake

Imaging soil-root processes and phenotyping root systems are important to improve agricultural yields. Recent studies have used electrical anisotropy as a parameter to characterize soil heterogeneity (Al-Hazaimay et al., 2016). Here, we extend it to plant root study. We hypothesize that effective electrical conductivity (𝜎_𝑒𝑓𝑓) and electrical anisotropy in 𝜎_𝑒𝑓𝑓 (EAF) electrical anisotropy contains information on the geometrical features of root architecture. To test our hypothesis, we performed 2D finite-element modeling of these properties in terms of EC distribution for a series of simulated root systems at plant and field scale (2m in length), with explicit representation of the root architecture in the finite-element mesh.