Review of the relationship between wheat roots and water stress

A large number of scientists have made a lot of carefully and thoroughly studying works and obtained many important results for widening absorbing ability of soil water,regulating suitability of roots to water stress,exploiting productive potential of dryland in the last several decades.The effects of water stress on wheat root morphology,architecture of root system and physiological indexes are reviewed in this paper.Studies have been made shown that under water stress,not only root weight,root specific surface area,root shoot ratio,root growing potential,root water potential,root vessel diameter,etc which express the indexes of wheat root morphology and architecture have significantly changed,but also bleeding sap,root respiratory rate,root plasma membrane permeability,plasmalemma peroxide level,root protective enzymes and its isoenzymes etc which express root physiological indexes have changed correspondingly.Although different researchers have different results,even some are contradictory,on the whole,all kinds of changes are adaptive reaction to water stress,which have advantage to improving wheat resistance of drought and have importance effect to yield formation under drought.