soil-structure
Soil structure refers to the way soil particles clump together into aggregates, creating a network of pores that shapes the physical environment surrounding plant roots. This arrangement governs how water, air, and nutrients move through the soil profile, directly influencing root penetration, seedling establishment, and microbial activity. Understanding soil structure is therefore essential for researchers studying root system architecture and developing strategies to improve crop resilience and soil health.
open_in_new WikipediaPubMed · 2026-07-02
Researchers used high-powered X-ray scanning to see, for the first time, the living fungal networks wrapped around plant roots inside undisturbed soil. They built a workflow to measure how these networks branch, grow, and occupy pore spaces, opening the door to understanding exactly how fungi ferry water and nutrients to plants.
Synchrotron micro-CT imaging successfully visualized arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal hyphae inside intact, undisturbed soil across two different soil textures without any physical disruption.
A quantitative 3D pipeline was developed to measure hyphal length, branching frequency, volume, surface area, and pore-space occupancy at the microscale.
The method also allows measurement of the contact area between fungal structures and both soil aggregates and plant roots, enabling direct linkage to nutrient and water transport models.