In silico analysis of carbon and water dynamics in the rhizosphere under drought conditions

Abstract. A plant's development is strongly linked to the water and carbon (C) flows in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. Ongoing climate shifts will alter the water and C cycles and affect plant phenotypes. Comprehensive models that simulate mechanistically and dynamically the feedback loops between water and C fluxes in the soil-plant system are useful tools to evaluate the sustainability of genotype-environment-management combinations that do not yet exist. In this study, we present the equations and implementation of a rhizosphere-soil model within the CPlantBox framework, a functional-structural plant model that represents plant processes and plant-soil interactions. The multi-scale plant-rhizosphere-soil coupling scheme previously used for CPlantBox was likewise updated, among others to increase the accuracy and stability of the model outputs. The model was implemented to simulate the effect of dry spells occurring at different plant development stages, and for different soil kinetic parameterisations of microbial dynamics in soil. We could observe diverging results according to the date of occurrence of the dry spells and soil parameterisations. For instance, earlier dry spells (from 11th to the 18th day of growth) led to a lower cumulative plant C release, while later dry spells (from 18th to the 25th day of growth) led to higher C input to the soil. For more reactive microbial communities (higher maximum C uptake rate and (de)activation rates), this higher C input caused a strong increase in CO2 emissions. For the same weather scenario, we observed lower microbial CO2 emissions with less reactive communities. This model can be used to gain insight into C and water flows at the plant scale, and the influence of soil-plant interactions on C cycling in soils.