Evaluation of the sugarcane root system with different methods

To select a method for the evaluation of a root system the research goals, crop of interest, and its growth conditions must be taken into consideration. The study of roots is highly important in the understanding of various phenomena of the shoot growth and development, but requires an extremely careful proceeding since evaluation methods are laborious and the roots are affected by the physiochemical variability of the soil. The objective of this research was to compare five evaluation methods for the root systems of two sugar-cane varieties at four depths, in two harvest systems: green cane harvesting and manual harvesting of burnt cane. Four methods were compared to the monolith method with dry matter quantification: monolith with length measurement, auger method, profile wall with length measurement by digital image analysis and profile wall with counting of the root number. Linear regressions expressed the relationship among the methods adequately, except in relation to the auger method. The profile wall methods were the most appropriate to detect differences among treatments.