COURSE WORK ASSIGNMENT

SUBMITTED BY:
SUBMITTED TO:
PARUL VERMA
Dr. QAZI FARIDUDDIN Ph. D (GL-9955)

CYTOGENETICS AND PLANT

BREEDING
INTRODUCTION
Growth refers to the irreversible changes in the size of a
cell, organ or whole plant. It involves both the cell
division and enlargement.
The plant growth can be visualized in terms of increase in
length or plant height, stem diameter, volume of tissue,
increase in cell numbers, increase in fresh weight and dry
weight, increase in leaf area, leaf weight etc.
At plant constituents level also increase in total proteins
and total DNA is directly associated with the plant
growth. The plant cells can increase in size in two ways.
The tip growth involves increase in the growth only in
the tip region such as in root hairs and pollen tubes.
Whereas, the diffuse growth involves overall growth and
is observed in sub apical parts of stems, roots, grass
coleoptile. At the organ level, the growth and
differentiation can be visualized from three different
zones
i) cell division zone,
ii) ii) cell elongation and differentiation zone and
 cell differentiation and maturation zone with some
overlap. The growth in the cell elongation zone is
governed by the rate of water uptake by cell and the cell
growth rate. These are dependent on the water potential
gradient, surface area of cell membrane, permeability of
membrane, cell wall extendibility and yield threshold or
the minimum turgor required for growth, cell wall
modifying proteins/enzymes for loosening of cell wall
nutrients, carbohydrates, ATP, hormones etc.

ROOT AND SHOOT LENGTH

ROOT PARAMETER
The parameters commonly used to express root growth and
distribution are number, weight, surface, volume, diameter,
length, and the number of root tips .
Most quantitative studies of roots have used weight as the
means of assessing the amount of root; but it is generally
accepted that the capacity to take up water and salts is usually
more closely related to the surface area or total length of the root
system than to its weight. Interest in root
Maximum root depth
The depth of the roots measured in meters from the soil surface when
the plant reaches the end of vegetative growth (beginning of
senescence).
 Information Source:

 Empirical measurements.
 Observed water extraction patterns.
 Root depths for some common crops are given in the Crop root
parameters table Maximum root depth may be higher than values
suggested here under very favorable conditions, or lower under
restricted conditions. Local experience must be used for proper
parameter selection.
 Uses :

 Current root depth as a function of plant development.

 Soil water uptake in soil layers penetrated by the roots (section.
 Water drainage as any water passing the potential root zone in
the Cascade and Finite Difference inifiltration models.
 Current root density distribution in soil layers as a linear function
of root depth.

Root length per unit root mass

In the line-measured algorithm, root length is calculated by
counting the number of orthogonally and diagonally
connected pairs of pixels
Maximum surface root density at full rooting depth

Curvature of root density distribution

Typically this ranges from near 0 to about 30. Values
around 0 have a near linear distribution. Higher numbers
give more root concentration in top layers of the soil

Thermal time
Now both the start and stop of root growth period can be
specified (previously root growth stopped at either end of
cresence (vegetative growth) or the end of rapid fruit
growth of fruit trees).
Crop root parameters
Max.
root Root length per Maximum surface root Curvature of root
Crop
depth unit root mass density at full rooting depth density distribution
(m)
Barley
1.2-1.6 ? ? ?
(Spring)
Beans (Dry) 0.9-1.3 ? ? ?
Lentils 0.9-1.3 ? ? ?
Maize 1.5-2.0 ? ? ?
Oats 1.2-1.6 ? ? ?
Peas (Dry) 0.9-1.3 ? ? ?
Sorghum 1.4-1.8 ? ? ?
Soybean 1.4-1.8 ? ? ?
Sunflower 1.7-2.2 ? ? ?
Wheat
1.2-1.6 ? ? ?
(spring)
Wheat
1.5-2.0 ? ? ?
(winter)
Grass
0.8 ? ? ?
(cropped)
What is the root length?
The root length density (total length of roots per unit of soil
volume; RLD) is a key factor to estimate the soil volume
explored by a root system and consequently the amount of
water and nutrients available to the plant [10–15]. Therefore,
RLD could be used to screen drought-tolerant varieties.22-Jul-2019
Fig. 1 shows a rectangular area within which some straight lines lie at random. If a root is laid
within the area, we should expect that the longer the root the more intersections it will make, on
average, with the straight lines. Thus the number of intersections can be used to estimate the
length of the root. It is shown in the Appendix that whatever the shape of the root, an estimate of
its length is given by: 7rNA (1) 2H where R is the total length of root, N is the number of
intersections between the root and the straight lines, A is the area of the rectangle, and H is the
total length of the straight lines. In the technique described here the straight lines are provided by
a hair-line in a microscope eye-piece.
 1ROOT AND SHOOT FRESH WEIGHT
Fresh weight is the weight of a plant when you harvest it.

MEASURING FRESH MASS

1. Remove plants from soil and wash off any loose soil.
2. Blot plants gently with soft paper towel to remove any free
surface moisture.
3. Weigh immediately 
DRY WEIGHT
The weight of any plant (or other organism) part after all its
water content has been removed by drying. The dry weight is
an estimate of a body or of a body samples weight when all
water has been removed, means the weight of the sample,
excluding the weight of the water in the sample.

ROOT SHOOT RATIO

The root-shoot ratio is usually given as the ratio of the weight
of the roots to the weight of the top of a plant. For most trees
under normal conditions, the root-shoot ratio is 1:5 to 1:6
(10,18); the top is 5 to 6 times heavier than the roots. If it were
not for the weight of the trunk, however, the top and roots
would weigh about the same (18).

NUMBER OF LEAVES AND LEAF AREA PER PLANT

Leaf area growth determines light interception and is an
important parameter in determining plant productivity . In
addition high-throughput phenotyping of plants often relies
on optical methods in which leaf area growth is compared
with estimates of photosynthesis derived from fluorescence
signals. Optical measurements such as leaf area are well
suited for high throughput screening for plants with altered
photosynthetic rates because they are non-destructive and
cost-effective . Introduction of a High-Throughput Plant
Growth Analysis Model that allows determination of the total
leaf area based on projected leaf are, estimation of shoot
biomass from high throughput plant images ( and the use
of high-throughput optical phenotyping to reveal
genetic variation between plants have been
attempted.