Studying the root system of grapevine.

Root distribution and density determine the volume of soil available to the plant for water and nutrient uptake. Their knowledge is of practical relevance to choose the right combination of cultural practices necessary to meet appropriate yield and quality goals. Unfortunately, information on this topic is very often lacking or difficult to generalize. In fact, simple and exhaustive methods to study the roots in the field are not available. Moreover, the description of the root system given by the various methods are not easily comparable because the data are expressed in different units. In this paper, three methods of study are compared and an attempt is made to give a synthetic representation of root system useful to compare more easily different cases.