leafkin -An R package for automated kinematic data analysis of monocot leaves.

Abstract

Growth is one of the most studied plant responses. At the cellular level, plant growth is driven by cell division and cell expansion. A means to quantify these two cellular processes is through kinematic analysis, a methodology that has been developed and perfected over the past decades, with in-depth descriptions of the methodology available. Unfortunately, after performing the lab work, researchers are required to perform time-consuming, repetitive and error-prone calculations. To lower the barrier towards this final step in the analysis and to aid researchers currently applying this technique, we have created leafkin , an R-package to perform all the calculations involved in the kinematic analysis of monocot leaves using only four functions. These functions support leaf elongation rate calculations, fitting of cell length profiles, extraction of fitted cell lengths and execution of kinematic equations. With the leafkin package, kinematic analysis of monocot leaves becomes more accessible than before.

Plant phenotyping relevance

単子葉植物葉の成長速度・細胞長プロファイルなどのキネマティック形質を抽出・解析するRパッケージが中心であり、植物フェノタイピング解析ツールに該当する。

Code and data availability

The authors publicly release the leafkin R package, a sample kinematic phenotype dataset (maize leaf lengths, cell lengths, meristem sizes from cadmium treatments), and a tutorial analysis script on the IMPRES-lab GitHub page, with explicit availability statements.