Root-root Recognition And Mechanism In Pisum Sativum And Vicia Sativa

Plant can recognize and respond to neighbor's root. The way of recognition was physical contact of direct or allelopathy of indirect or both way of recognition. Possession of an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) put forward by Gersani et al. (2001) suggested that plants overproduced roots comparing with plants grown without competition. A lot of studies shown that competing plants produced more root and less reproduction, but study of Avena sativa by Semchenko et al.(2007) displayed that there were no change in root and reproduction mass. In addition, there were also evidences that didn't support this model in recent years, some factors can lead to overproduce roots such as size-asymmetric competition, change of aboveground competition, substrate volume, but only respond to the presence or absence of neighbors. Therefore, it is necessary to need more studies to confirm the model.The study was conducted with Pisum sativum (cultivated species) and Vicia sativa (wild related species) to discuss mechanism and way of the recognition responding to the presence of neighbors. The study was carried out by three factors including nutrients, pot partitions and activated carbon.The results as follows:plants can identify and respond to neighbor's root in Pisum sativum and Vicia sativa, and way of recognition including both physical contact of direct and allelopathy of indirect. For Pisum sativum, there were no change in total root and shoot mass, reproduction mass in the presence and absence of neighbor's root. For Vicia sativa, there were no change in shoot mass and root mass in the presence and absence of neighbor's root; but plants produced more reproduction mass in the presence of neighbor's root.Different way of root-root recognition had different effects to both plants and each tissue of plant. Pisum sativum:physical contact of direct increased and allelopathy of indirect decreased leafstalk mass, the net result was no change in both way of recognition; physical contact increased but not significantly and allelopathy decreased stem mass, the net result was no change in both way of recognition; physical contact increased but not significantly and allelopathy decreased shoot mass, the net result was no change in lower nutrient; both way of recognition increased but not significantly tertiary root mass, the net result was no change in both way of recognition.Vicia sativa:physical contact of direct decreased and allelopathy of indirect increased stem mass, the net result was no change in both way of recognition; physical contact decreased but not significantly and allelopathy increased shoot mass, the net result was no change in lower nutrient; physical contact decreased and allelopathy increased but not significantly of both way root mass, the net result was no change in both way of recognition; both way of recognition increased but not significantly reproduction mass, the net result was more reproduction biomass in both way of recognition.