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Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Plants adapt the growth of their roots and shoots differently in response to environmental changes. This is the outcome of a study involving the Ecological-Botanical Garden (ÖBG) at the University of Bayreuth. The researchers challenge previous assessments of climate change impacts on plants, which often extrapolate from aboveground to belowground plant structures. Their findings have been published in the journal Plant & Soil.
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Why it matters
It’s not only climate change—with rising temperatures and increasing droughts—that puts stress on plants. They also face altered soil nutrient conditions due to human activities such as agriculture, industry, and transport. However, many studies focus solely on the aboveground part of the plant—the shoot—and generalise findings to the entire plant. Since roots are essential for water and nutrient uptake, it is crucial to understand whether results from shoot studies can be applied to root systems. This will in turn lead to a better understanding of the effects of climate change and human influence on both wild and cultivated plants.
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Using a multifactorial greenhouse experiment, researchers led by Dr. Lena Muffler-Weigel and Dr. Robert Weigel, Executive Academic Directors of the University of Bayreuth’s Botanical Garden, investigated the impact of nutrient input and drought exposure on plant root systems. They chose sorrel (Rumex acetosa) and ribwort plantain (Plantago lanceolata) for the study. “Both species are commonly found in local meadows and along paths. That’s precisely why they were of interest to us—as representatives of temperate pasture and meadow ecosystems in Europe,” says Muffler-Weigel.
In the greenhouse, the researchers examined the effects of nutrient input and drought both separately and in combination. They varied watering and fertilisation levels and planted the two species both individually and together. This allowed them to determine how different factors interact to influence plant growth.
“In our experiment, we showed that nutrient deficiency in particular leads plants to invest more in root development,” explains Muffler-Weigel. In conditions of low nutrient availability, the belowground parts of the plant respond actively to compensate for limited nutrient availability. In contrast, typical shoot traits such as leaf size showed a conservative resource-use strategy under limited resources, with minimal growth and slow, targeted nutrient use to avoid waste of resources. “Roots and shoots respond differently and must be considered more as an integrated system in ecological assessments,” says Muffler-Weigel.
Increasing nutrient input in temperate ecosystems can, to some extent, offset drought-related losses in aboveground biomass productivity, as plants invest more in shoot growth when nutrients are abundant. However, rising nutrient levels combined with increasing drought—both observed in the context of global warming—have a doubly negative effect on root biomass development: with heavy fertilisation, plants stop actively investing in root growth, limiting their ability to access new water sources, while drought reduces overall growth.
“Our study shows that the biosphere cannot automatically be relied upon as a carbon sink under increasing nutrient input and growing drought. Ecological assessments of socio-economic scenarios based on aboveground biomass observations underestimate the negative effects of global change on root biomass and thus on long-term carbon sequestration. Our findings highlight the need to include the root zone in climate policy considerations,” says Muffler-Weigel.
Dr. Lena Muffler-Weigel
Managing Director of the Botanical Garden
University of Bayreuth
Phone: +49 (0)921 / 55-2961
E-mail: lena.muffler-weigel@uni-bayreuth.de
Robert Weigel, Alexandra Werner, Laura Würzberg, Kyra Zembold, Katherine Angulo, Wilhelmine Bach, Capucine Hémonnet‑Dal, Tessa Nähring, Monika Hiebenga, Lena Muffler. Root and shoot traits of two common herbs respond differently to drought and fertilization in a multifactorial global change experiment. Plant and Soil (2025).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-025-07560-x
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