Transparent-Compartmental Pot for Root Study

บทคัดย่อ

Studies of plant roots come in various techniques. Almost all methods of studies include the wholeroot system of a single plant or a group of plants. The objective of this investigation was to develop a special pot thatwas able to separate a plant’s roots to grow into different compartments in order to open a new window in crop rootstudy. Iterative work was carried out comprising development, testing, and improvement of a transparent-compart-mental (TC) pot. This TC pot was made of transparent acrylic with cementing glue. It looked like a double pyramid- one inside another - with a mouth on top of the outer piece. Fins along the spines of the inner piece divided this potinto four separate compartments, while the basal fins acted as pot base preventing leakage of planting medium.Both pieces could be held together by bolts and nuts at their bases; and they sat firmly on an edged tray. Tests of theseTC pots were done by planting rice, and then rice roots were guided to grow into each compartment. Planting inplastic pails were also done for comparison. The results were satisfactory. Rice roots grew separately into all fourcompartments. Over all root and shoot growths of rice grown in the TC pots and plastic pails were normal andsimilar.