Rooting Patterns and Aucubin Content in Plantago lanceolata

Michal Pol (), Olivier Potterat, Florian Tröber, Sylwia Lewandowska and Knut Schmidtke
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Michal Pol: Department of Genetics, Plant Breeding and Seed Production, Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences, Plac Grunwaldzki 24A, 50-375 Wrocław, Poland
Olivier Potterat: Division of Pharmaceutical Biology, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Basel, Klingelbergstrasse 50, 4056 Basel, Switzerland
Florian Tröber: Research Institute for Organic Agriculture (FiBL), Ackerstrasse 113, 5070 Frick, Switzerland
Sylwia Lewandowska: Department of Genetics, Plant Breeding and Seed Production, Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences, Plac Grunwaldzki 24A, 50-375 Wrocław, Poland
Knut Schmidtke: Research Institute for Organic Agriculture (FiBL), Ackerstrasse 113, 5070 Frick, Switzerland

Agriculture, 2024, vol. 14, issue 8, 1-14

Abstract: Ribwort plantain ( Plantago lanceolata L.) is expected to open up new crop cultivation perspectives in arable farming in order to significantly reduce nitrogen losses through leaching, N 2 O emissions and to increase resilience under drought conditions. Therefore, this study investigated the properties of the roots as an alternative to grasses for forage production under drought conditions. Ten genotypes of ribwort plantain were compared under field conditions in northern Switzerland, focusing on the characteristics of the root system and the aucubin content in the leaves and roots. Aucubin, known for inhibiting the nitrification process in the soil, varied according to genotype and season. All tested genotypes showed higher aucubin content in leaves than in roots, which may indicate the greater importance of leaves in reducing soil nitrification. Dry matter yield and for the first time root characteristics, such as root length density (RLD) and specific root length (SRL), were evaluated at two different soil depths, and at different distances from the plants. The results showed that ribwort is well adapted to acquire water and nutrients in terms of rooting in topsoil. In addition, a second field experiment conducted in eastern Germany (Saxony) confirmed the plant’s ability to root deeply after one year of cultivation, reaching depths of up to even 1.88 m. The obtained results indicate the high capacity of ribwort plantain to take up water and nutrients also from deeper soil layers. To reduce N 2 O emissions through the cultivation of ribwort plantain, the choice of genotype seems to be of great importance due to varying aucubin contents.

Keywords: ribwort plantain; ribwort genotypes; root traits; root system characteristics; secondary metabolite (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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