Key root traits of Poaceae for adaptation to soil water gradients

What is it about?

Plants transport water from the soils to the leaves through xylem in the stele and oxygen from the air to the root tips through aerenchyma (internal gas-space) in the cortex. We show that there is a trade-off between stele size and cortex size in roots with respect to adaptation to the dry and wet soils: the species adapted to dry and wet soils have higher ratio of stele to cortex and cortex to stele to efficiently transport water and oxygen, respectively.

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