Basic Soil-Plant-Water

Relationships
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Rationale:
knowledge of soil and water relationships is valuable to all who
have the opportunity to improve irrigation practices, including
the irrigators who desire to obtain the best use of water available
for their farms
soil and water relationships of special importance in irrigated
regions include the capacities of well-drained soils in the field to
retain water available for plants and the flow or movement of
water in soils
intelligent irrigation practices based on knowledge of soil and
moisture is also a means of preventing or at least retarding the
occurrence of water-logging in soils.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Physical & biological factors that affect the ability of a
community to produce food for its constituents:

1. The natural resources available, especially soil and

water ;
2. Available technology, including the knowledge of
proper management of plants, animals, soils and
water ;
3. Improved plant varieties and animal breeds which
respond to proper management ; and
4. Supplies of production inputs such as fertilizers,
insecticides and irrigation water.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Reasons why soil-water-plant relationships is an
important tool in the proper management of irrigation
and drainage systems for food production:

1. Large quantities of water must be supplied to satisfy

the requirements of growing plants as the water is lost
by evaporation from leaf surfaces
(evapotranspiration). This water must be available
when the plants need it, and most of it come from the
soil.
2. Water is the solvent that, together with the dissolved
nutrients, makes up the soil solution.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Reasons why soil-water-plant relationships is an
important tool in the proper management of irrigation
and drainage systems for food production:

3. Soil moisture helps control two other important

components so essential to normal plant growth – soil air
and soil temperature.
4. The control of the disposition of water as it strikes the
soil, determines to a large extent the incidence of soil
erosion that devastating menace which constantly
threatens to impair or even destroy our soils.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Soil as a system:
Definition:

Soil is a complex material which has different definitions

depending on the concept. In the pedalogic concept, soil is
defined as natural body :

The soil consists of the outer layer of the unconsolidated

crust of the earth, ranging in thickness from a film to several
feet, which differs from the material beneath in color,
morphology, texture, structure, chemical composition, and in
physical and biological characteristics.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Soil as a system:
Definition:
In the genetic concept, soil is defined as dynamic and
changing :
 
Soil is a loose mineralogic material that has acquired
definite characteristics due to soil forming sources.
 
From an agronomic point of view :
 
Soil is a natural body, composed of mineral and organic
materials on the surface of the earth in which plants
grow.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Soil as a system:

Composition:

Solid phase
Liquid phase
Gaseous
phase
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Basic physical properties of soil:
Soil texture:

The sizes of particles making up a soil determine its

texture.
These particles range in size from fine gravel to
clay.
Particles larger than 1.00 mm in diameter are
gravel, particles from 0.05 to 1.00 are sand, particles
from 0.002 mm to 0.05 mm are silt, and smaller than
0.002 mm are clay.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:

Basic physical properties of

soil:

The soil
triangle:
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Particle classification:
Soil separates/fractions Effective particle diameter (mm)
USDA ISSS
Gravel > 2.0 > 2.0
Very coarse sand 1.0 – 2.0
Coarse sand 0.5 – 1.0 0.20 – 2.0
Medium sand 0.25 – 0.5
Fine sand 0.10 – 0.25 0.02 – 0.20
Very fine sand 0.05 – 0.10
Silt 0.002 – 0.05 0.002 – 0.2
Clay < 0.002 < 0.002
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Typical FCs and PWPs for different soils:
MC (%by weight)
Soil type Available water
(mm/m soil)
FC PWP

Clay 40 30 135

Clay loam 40 25 150

Sandy loam 28 18 120

Fine sand 15 8 80

Sand 8 4 55
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Soil structure:

Favorable soil structure is recognized by soil scientists as the

key to soil fertility.
The permeability of soils to water, air and roots provided by
favorable soil structure is equally important to crop growth as
are adequate supplies of nutrients.
Soil structure is fundamentally built by wetting and drying,
freezing and thawing, or combination of these conditions.
 Penetrating roots build soil structure by removing water from
the soil which causes drying and permits subsequent wetting.
The primary functions of organic matter and of humus in the
soil is to add stability to soil aggregates serving as a cushion
against the shock of tillage.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Soil structure:
Important practices to be followed to maintain & improve the
structure of soils:

1. plow below compacted layer, not at the same depth each

year ;
2. allow as much time as practical for soil and air to interact
after plowing before giving preplanting irrigation or before
preparing seedbed ;
3. return all possible organic matter to the soil ;
4. follow a good crop rotation on legumes, cash-crops, and
fibrous rooted crops ;
5. reduce cultivation and tillage operations to a minimum.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Real specific gravity
(Rs)
a dimensionless quantity and is defined as the ratio of the
density of a single soil particle to the density of a volume of
water equal to the volume of the particle of soil
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Particle density (ρs)

Particle density is the same (in metric units) as real

specific gravity and is the weight per volume of soil
particle with dimensions of grams per cubic
centimeter :

Some irrigated soils which are formed largely of organic

matter have a real specific gravity of 1.5 to 2.0 depending
on the amount of mineral matter present.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Apparent specific gravity
(As):
The apparent specific gravity of a soil is defined as
the ratio of the weight of a given volume of dry soil,
air space included, to the weight of an equal volume
of water.
 
This ratio is also known as  volume weight  or
 bulk density . 
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Porosity (ɳ):
The pore space on a percentage basis is given by the
eq’n

Where n = percent pore space

As = apparent specific gravity
Rs = real specific gravity, approximately 2.65
for most agricultural soils
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Porosity (ɳ):

- equivalent to pore space, is defined as the ratio of the

volume of voids (air- and water-filled space) to the total
volume of soil plus water and air.
- has direct bearing upon productive value of soils
because of its influence upon water-holding capacity
and upon the movement of air, water and roots through
the soil.
- when the pore space of a productive soil is reduced to
10%, movement of air, water, and roots is greatly
restricted and growth is very seriously impeded
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Infiltration:
-is the term applied to the process of water entry into
the soil generally by downward flow through all or
parts of the soil surface
-the rate of this process, relative to the rate of supply
determines how much water will enter the rootzone,
and how much if any, will run off
- the rate of infiltration affects not only the water
economy of plant communities, but also the amount of
surface runoff and its attendant danger of soil erosion.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Intake:
-rate of infiltration from a furrow into the soil is
refered to as the intake rate
- this term indicates that infiltration occurs under
a particular soil surface configuration
-Intake rate is therefore influenced by furrow size
and shape, whereas infiltration rate applies to a
level surface covered with water.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Permeability:
-the permeability (or conductivity) of a soil
is defined as the velocity of flow caused by a
unit gradient
-changes in water temperature influence
permeability slightly
-for unsaturated soils, the moisture content is
one of the dominant factors influencing
permeability
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Depth of soil:
-shallow soils require frequent irrigations to keep crops
growing
-excessive deep percolation losses usually occur from
irrigation when shallow soils over-lie coarse-textured ,
highly permeable sands and gravels
- deep soils of medium texture and loose structure permit
plants to root deeply, provide for storage of large
volumes of irrigation water in the soil and consequently
sustain satisfactory plant growth during relatively long
periods between irrigations.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Soil moisture content:
-direct methods of measuring moisture contents of soils, although
tedious and costly, have substantial value
-the practice is to bore or drive to desired depths with a soil auger
or a soil tube, to remove samples of the moist soil and place in
containers provided with covers and to take the samples to a
laboratory for weighing and drying (at 105°C from 8 –16 hours)
gravimetric method
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Soil moisture content:
It is also desirable to convert dry-weight basis moisture
percentages MCw (or Pw/w) to volume percentages MCv
(or Pv/v). The apparent specific gravity of the soil,
represented by the symbol As is defined as the ratio of the
weight of a given volume of soil to the weight of an
equal volume of water
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Soil moisture content:
Moisture content can also be represented as a
depth d obtained by multiplying the percentage
volume Pv by the volume of the soil D :
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Illustration:
a: air

b: water

c: soil

d: Soil depth
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Illustration:
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Field capacity:
-when gravitational water has been removed , the
moisture content of the soil is called field capacity
-a soil will come to field capacity more quickly
when an active crop is growing than when there
are no roots removing water from the soil
-soil moisture tension is usually at 1/10 and 1/3
atm when the soil is at field capacity.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Permanent wilting point:
-the moisture content when the plants permanently wilt is called the
permanent wilting point or the wilting coefficient
-PWP is at the lower end of the available moisture range
- permanent wilting, as well as temporary wilting depends upon the
rate of water used by the crop, depth of the root zone, and the water-
holding capacity of the soil
-a plant is considered to be permanently wilted when it will not
recover after being placed in a saturated atmosphere where little or
consumptive water use occurs.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Permanent wilting point:
-the tension at which permanent wilting occurs can
vary to as high as 40 atm, depending upon the rate
of consumptive use
-as an approximation, the permanent wilting
percentage can be estimated by dividing the FC by
a factor varying from 2.0 to 2.4 depending upon the
amount of silt in the soil.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Available moisture:
The difference in the moisture content of the soil
between FC and PWP is termed the available
moisture.

AWC = MCfc - MCpwp

Where AWC = available water content

 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Illustration:
S Si C

40 atm

Soil moisture
tension

1/3 atm

θPWP θ FC

Soil Moisture , θ
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Readily available moisture:

-soil moisture near the wilting point is not readily

available to the plant
-the term readily available moisture has been
used to refer to that portion of the available
moisture that is most easily extracted by plant
roots
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Filling the available water reservoir:

-having determined the amount of water to

be added to the soil, the irrigator needs to
know how long will it be necessary to apply a
given stream of water
-the relationship between size of stream,
time of application and depth of water to be
applied is as follows :

qt = ad
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Filling the available water reservoir:
Where q = size of stream, L³/T
t = time to irrigate the area, T
a = area to be irrigated, L²
d = depth that the volume of water used would cover the
irrigated land if quickly spread uniformly over its
surface, L
Remember :
d = ( Pw As D ) / 100
Substituting in the above equation gives
T = (a d) / q = (Pw As D a) / 100 q
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Forces in soil water:
Water is retained or moves through the soil depending
on the dominant component of the soil water
potential (w).

water potential is the amount of work that a unit

quantity of water in an equilibrium soil water (or
plant-water) system is capable of doing when it moves
to a pool of water in the reference state at the same
temperature
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Forces in soil water:
The term soil water potential denotes the specific potential
energy of soil water under standard reference state

Water potential can be expressed in terms of its

component potentials :
 
w = p + s + m
 
wherein p is the pressure potential, s is the solute
potential, m is the matric potential.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Forces in soil water:

If the gravitational potential z is added to both

sides of the equation above, then the total
potential t becomes
 
t = z + w = p + s + m + z
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:

Forces in soil water:

Technically, the total soil water potential is
defined as the amount of work that must be
done per unit quantity of pure free water in
order to transport reversibly and isothermally
an infinitesimal quantity of water from a pool of
pure water at a specified elevation at
atmospheric pressure to the soil water (at the
point under consideration)
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Forces in soil water:
Gravitational potential
 
The gravitational potential z is the difference in
elevation of the point in question and the
reference point. If the point in question is above
the reference, z is positive (+) ; if it is below, z is
negative (-). Note that gravitational potential is
independent of soil properties.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Forces in soil water:
Matric potential
 
The matric potential m is related to the absorptive
forces of the soil matrix and has a negative value. If
the unit quantity of water is expressed as weight, then m
at a point in the soil is the vertical distance between
that point and the water surface in the manometer. In
theory, m is zero in saturated soil but saturated soil is
seldom attained and hence, m may have a small negative
value.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Forces in soil water:

The matric zHg

potential in the
soil can be
measured with zo

a tensiometer. z

Ceramic cup

A tensiometer set-up.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Forces in soil water:

Wherein Hg is the density of mercury (13.6 g/cm3)

and w is the density of water (1.0 g/cm3).
upon substitution of values, yields

m = -13.6 zHg + z
which reduces to
m = -12.6 zHg + zo
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Forces in soil water:
The pressure potential p applies mostly to saturated soils
under field conditions. If the quantity of water is
expressed as a weight, then p is the vertical distance
from a point in the soil to the water surface in a
piezometer connected to the point in question. In the
field, p is zero above and at the level of water in the
piezometer ; below this level, the pressure head is
always positive. It increases with depth below this level
even though the water content of the soil does not change
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Forces in soil water:
Water potentials for equilibrium conditions
water flows from locations where the total water
potential is high to locations where the potential is low
differences in osmotic potential only play a role in
causing the movement of water in the soil profile when
there is an effective barrier for salt movement between the
two locations at which the difference in s was observed
osmotic potential does not act as a driving force in
water flow.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Forces in soil water:
the total water potential is also known as
hydraulic potential h.

for equilibrium conditions, the hydraulic

potential is constant everywhere

Water potentials for non-equilibrium conditions.

Liquid water flows as a result of potential
gradients 
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Infiltration:
Infiltration is the term applied to the process of
water entry into the soil generally by downward
flow through all or parts of the soil surface

 the rate of infiltration affects not only the water

economy of plant communities, but also the
amount of surface runoff and its attendant danger
of soil erosion.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Infiltration:

Fig. 1. Dependence of the infiltration rate upon time,

under an irrigation of constant intensity lower than the
initial value but higher than the final value of soil
infiltrability.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Infiltration:

Infiltrability designates the limiting rate which the

soil can absorb through its surface.

It means that as long as the rate of water delivery

to the surface is smaller than the soil’s infiltrability,
water infiltrates as fast as it arrives and the supply
rate determines the infiltration rate. This latter
process is “supply or flux controlled” (part 1 in
Figure 1).
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Infiltration:

once the delivery rate exceeds the soil

infiltrability, it is the latter which
determines the actual infiltration rate,
and thus the process becomes “surface
controlled or profile controlled” (part II
in Figure 1).
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Infiltration:

Figure 2. Time dependence of cumulative

infiltration under shallow ponding.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Infiltration:
Factors affecting the infiltration rate
1. Factors that affect the surface entry, profile
transmission characteristics and water storage
capacity, viz. texture, structure, organic matter,
soil compaction, formation of hard pans,
hydraulic conductivity, soil water content, pore
size distribution, swelling and shrinking and the
nature of clay.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Infiltration:
Factors affecting the infiltration rate
2. Factors that affect the properties of
water, viz. contamination of water by
suspended materials and salts, temperature
and viscosity.
3. Rainfall characteristics.
4. Factors that are affected by surface
features, viz., slope, vegetation and surface
roughness.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Infiltration:
Infiltration rates & associated soil texture:

Final Probable soil texture

infiltration
(cm/hr)
High 3.0 to 8.0 + Sandy loam, sandy
Medium high 1.5 to 3.0 Loam, silt loam
Medium low 0.5 to 1.5 Clay loam, clay, silty clay
loam
Low 0.2 to 0.5 Clay, adobe clay
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Infiltration:

Typical infiltrability curves for different soils

 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Infiltration:
The soil water content affects the infiltration rate in
three ways.
First, with the increase in the soil water content, the
soil pores are filled with water, reducing the
infiltration.
Secondly, wetting a dry soil encourages capillary
forces which pull the water at a greater rate. However,
with the increase in the depth of the wetted zone such
effects are decreased.
Thirdly, the wetting of the soil may cause swelling
of soil colloids reducing the infiltration rate.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Infiltration:

Infiltrability as a function of time (a) in a uniform soil, (b) in a

soil with a more permeable upper layer, and (c) in a soil covered
by a surface crust.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Infiltration:
The physical characteristics of the infiltrating water also affect
infiltration.
Suspended materials in the infiltrating water not only block the
pores but also affect the viscosity of water.
The temperature affects the rate of movement of water in the
soil. It is well known that the percolation of water through a soil
column increases with an increase in temperature especially due
to:

the decrease in viscosity of water;

the increase in the surface tension of the percolating water.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Infiltration:
Measurement:

Double ring infiltrometer

 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Infiltration:
Measurement:
The quantities most commonly required are:
 
initial infiltration rate
instantaneous infiltration rate
basic infiltration rate: is the relatively constant
infiltration rate that develops after some 3-5 hrs.
cumulative infiltration
time required to reach the constant infiltration rate
time required for a given depth of water to infiltrate
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Infiltration:
Empirical equations:
Kostiakov eqn:
i = at-b I = ctα
 
where
i = infiltration rate I = cumulative water uptake,
or depth of infiltration
t = time after infiltration starts t = time of infiltration
 
a and b: empirical constants c and α: empirical constants
function of soil characteristics function of soil chars.
 Basic Soil-Plant-Water Relationships:
Infiltration:
Empirical equations:
Philip eqn:

 
where
S = sorptivity or storage capacity (cm.min-1/2): function of soil
properties and initial condition of the soil, and dominant in early
stage of infiltration
A = conductivity or ability to transmit water (cm.min-1/2) dominant
in the later stages of infiltration. This conductivity constant
approximates the Ksat for the soil type being analyzed.