A system for the study of roots 3D kinematics in hydroponic culture: a study on the oscillatory features of root tip

Abstract

Background The root of a plant is a fundamental organ for the multisensory perception of the environment. Investigating root growth dynamics as a mean of their interaction with the environment is of key importance for improving knowledge in plant behaviour, plant biology and agriculture. To date, it is difficult to study roots movements from a dynamic perspective given that available technologies for root imaging focus mostly on static characterizations, lacking temporal and three-dimensional (3D) spatial information. This paper describes a new system based on time-lapse for the 3D reconstruction and analysis of roots growing in hydroponics. Results The system is based on infrared stereo-cameras acquiring time-lapse images of the roots for 3D reconstruction. The acquisition protocol guarantees the root growth in complete dark while the upper part of the plant grows in normal light conditions. The system extracts the 3D trajectory of the root tip and a set of descriptive features in both the temporal and frequency domains. The system has been used on Zea mays L. (B73) during the first week of growth and shows good inter-reliability between operators with an Intra Class Correlation Coefficient (ICC) > 0.9 for all features extracted. It also showed measurement accuracy with a median difference of Conclusions The system and the protocol presented in this study enable accurate 3D analysis of primary root growth in hydroponics. It can serve as a valuable tool for analysing real-time root responses to environmental stimuli thus improving knowledge on the processes contributing to roots physiological and phenotypic plasticity.

Plant phenotyping relevance

根の3D動態を取得・解析する画像計測システムを開発し、特徴量の信頼性と精度を検証しており、植物表現型取得が中心である。

Code and data availability

The paper's 3D root tip trajectory data (phenotyping measurements from maize root imaging) are publicly deposited on Zenodo. The analysis software and scripts are only available upon request, so they qualify as request_only.