Mind(the)Plant: An expandable multimodal facility for the integrated characterization of plant behaviour

Abstract

Understanding plant behaviour requires the integration of multiple phenotypic and physiological signals measured over time under controlled conditions. However, different plant signals are typically studied using separate experimental setups, limiting temporal alignment and integrative analyses.We present Mind(the)Plant, a modular experimental facility designed for the synchronized, long-term acquisition of multimodal plant data, including three-dimensional shoot kinematics, above- and below-ground volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and root imaging. Its modular architecture is designed to accommodate additional acquisition modules, such as electrophysiological signalling, as future extensions. The platform integrates a controlled growth environment with stereovision imaging, high-resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometry and custom rhizocameras. These components are connected through a unified network infrastructure that ensures synchronized acquisition and centralized data handling.We validate the performance of each acquisition module through multi-week recordings, demonstrating high-temporal stability, reliable stereovision synchronization, effective isolation of VOCs signals and robust operation of below-ground imaging. We further illustrate the analytical potential of the platform using a one-day continuous multimodal acquisition combining shoot kinematics, above-ground VOC emissions, rhizocameras observations and environmental data.Mind(the)Plant provides a novel methodological framework for studying plant behaviour, signalling and phenotypic plasticity in ecological and evolutionary research. By enabling coordinated measurements of multiple plant response modalities, the platform supports investigations of dynamic plant-environment and plant-plant interactions from a behavioural perspective.

Plant phenotyping relevance

植物の複数の表現型・生理シグナルを同期取得する施設を開発し、各取得モジュールの性能を検証しているため、表現型計測プラットフォームが研究の中心です。

Code and data availability

The paper's data availability statement explicitly deposits data, code and processing pipelines (supporting the multimodal plant phenotyping measurements and analysis) in a public Zenodo archive with an authors' URL matching an allowed URL.