Abstract:Soil nutrients are distributed in a heterogeneous or patchy manner with different sizes. In order to adapt to the heterogeneous environment and enhance resource capture, plant roots have to respond to these nutrient patches from the morphological and physiological plasticity. When roots encounter a nutrient-rich patch they often proliferate within it, especially fine roots with higher specific root length. Meanwhile, their physiological ion-uptake capacities are also higher compared with roots outside the nutrient patch. The effect of the spatial nutrient heterogeneity on plant growth depends on nutrient patch attributes (size, strength，composition，location and so on ) and plant intrinsic traits (sensibility and root foraging ability). These differences of the plant traits or nutrient patch attributes and the timing variation of the root encountering the patch can intensify inter- or intraspecific competition in plant populations or community. The root which encounters the patch firstly proliferates in the nutrient hotspots and thus leads to resource pre-emption. That might cause size-asymmetric root competition in spatial nutrient heterogeneity conditions. In populations, the intensive and size-asymmetric root competition caused by the nutrient patch can enhance the shoot size variation and influence the structure of the population. Also, the spatial nutrient heterogeneity can affect the diversity of species and productivity within community due to the diversity of root foraging precision and competitiveness between species. The plant species with the stronger foraging ability (e.g. clonal plant) may integrate and dominate over small-scale resource patches and improve their biomass, leading to reduce the positive effect of small-scale resource heterogeneity on plant species richness.