[Significance of senescence study on tree roots and its advances]

Root system is one of the important components of trees, and has some important physiological functions such as nutrient and water absorption, transport and storage, anchoring, and supporting. After tree root systems formed, roots often suffer from nutrient- and water-deficient stress, and thus, their absorption of nutrients and water appears more important. Soil nutrient and water have a great spatiotemporal heterogeneity. As the heterogeneity occurs, trees regulate carbon partitioning to roots, resulting in the senescence or death of some roots of the whole root system. In forestry, the senescence of tree roots is closely related to tree productivity, because there is a close relationship between the senescence of tree roots and the absorption of soil nutrient and water. At ecosystem and global scale, the senescence of tree roots influences the cycling of carbon and nutrients, because roots exhaust a great deal of carbon fixed by source leaves through photosynthesis, and there are great amounts of nutrients in tree roots. The senescence of tree roots is influenced by many environmental factors, biotic (e.g., fungi, bacteria, viruses, small edaphic animals) and abiotic (e.g., water, temperature, soil nutrients, heavy metals). These factors affect the senescence of tree roots by different mechanisms. Although we have much knowledge on the senescence of tree roots and some hypotheses have been proposed, some problems still remain to be resolved, and further experiments are needed to test these hypotheses. Interdisciplinary studies integrating cytology, biochemistry, soil science, and genetics are the prerequisite for rapid advances in understanding the essence of tree root senescence.