diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index ffa5b3025..f8a0f7ad3 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -7,4 +7,4 @@ queuelib
 six>=1.5.2
 PyDispatcher>=2.0.5
 service_identity
-parsel>=0.9.1
+parsel>=0.9.2
diff --git a/scrapy/linkextractors/lxmlhtml.py b/scrapy/linkextractors/lxmlhtml.py
index 7c41a88ff..606a45212 100644
--- a/scrapy/linkextractors/lxmlhtml.py
+++ b/scrapy/linkextractors/lxmlhtml.py
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ class LxmlParserLinkExtractor(object):
     def _extract_links(self, selector, response_url, response_encoding, base_url):
         links = []
         # hacky way to get the underlying lxml parsed document
-        for el, attr, attr_val in self._iter_links(selector._root):
+        for el, attr, attr_val in self._iter_links(selector.root):
             # pseudo lxml.html.HtmlElement.make_links_absolute(base_url)
             attr_val = urljoin(base_url, attr_val)
             url = self.process_attr(attr_val)
diff --git a/scrapy/selector/unified.py b/scrapy/selector/unified.py
index 3c75a92d2..e229b10b8 100644
--- a/scrapy/selector/unified.py
+++ b/scrapy/selector/unified.py
@@ -48,6 +48,12 @@ class Selector(ParselSelector, object_ref):
         super(Selector, self).__init__(text=text, type=st, root=root, **kwargs)
 
     # Deprecated api
+    @property
+    def _root(self):
+        warnings.warn("Attribute `_root` is deprecated, use `root` instead",
+                      ScrapyDeprecationWarning, stacklevel=2)
+        return self.root
+
     @deprecated(use_instead='.xpath()')
     def select(self, xpath):
         return self.xpath(xpath)
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 6fe303f15..2d2d8660f 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ setup(
         'pyOpenSSL',
         'cssselect>=0.9',
         'six>=1.5.2',
-        'parsel>=0.9.1',
+        'parsel>=0.9.2',
         'PyDispatcher>=2.0.5',
         'service_identity',
     ],
diff --git a/tests/test_selector.py b/tests/test_selector.py
index 8dc194e19..d9660c674 100644
--- a/tests/test_selector.py
+++ b/tests/test_selector.py
@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ class SelectorTestCase(unittest.TestCase):
     def test_deprecated_root_argument(self, warnings):
         root = etree.fromstring(u'<html/>')
         sel = self.sscls(_root=root)
-        self.assertIs(root, sel._root)
+        self.assertIs(root, sel.root)
         warnings.warn.assert_called_once_with(
             'Argument `_root` is deprecated, use `root` instead',
             mock.ANY, stacklevel=2)