EpiReasoner: An Integrated Artificial Intelligence Framework for Phenotype-to-Genotype Reasoning in Plant Epidermal Development

Abstract

Achieving high-throughput and precise phenotypic quantification and imaging modalities of stomatal and epidermal cells across diverse species remains a primary bottleneck in elucidating the mechanisms of stomatal dynamics, epidermal patterning, and environmental adaptation of plants. Here, we developed EpiReasoner, an artificial intelligence framework comprising a vision module, EpiVision, and a knowledge-based reasoning module, EpiBrain, for the quantitative phenotypic analysis and domain-specific knowledge reasoning of stomatal complexes and pavement cells in plants. Operating across bright-field, scanning electron microscopy, and differential interference contrast modalities, EpiVision achieves precise instance segmentation in various monocotyledonous, dicotyledonous, and fern species. Its performance significantly surpasses current state-of-the-art models. Moreover, we defined 23 quantitative indices describing stomatal cell morphology and spatial distribution. For domain-specific tasks such as phenotype prediction, genotype deduction, and molecular mechanism reasoning, EpiBrain demonstrates a human preference rate significantly higher than that of general-purpose large language models, including GPT-5 and Claude Sonnet 4. The application of EpiReasoner to phenotypic data of stomatal density derived from a tomato natural population of 170 accessions successfully identified a major quantitative trait locus on chromosome 8. The candidate gene, SKP1-interaction partner 19L ( SKIP19L ), encoding an F-box family protein, exhibited severe allele frequency drift during tomato domestication, which is highly consistent with the adaptive trend of reduced stomatal density under artificial selection. EpiReasoner provides a novel paradigm that unifies visual phenomics and knowledge-driven reasoning for the biology of stomata and pavement cells, thereby significantly accelerating scientific discovery in plant science.

Plant phenotyping relevance

植物の気孔・表皮細胞を対象に、画像解析と知識推論を統合したフェノタイピング手法を開発しており、形態・空間分布の定量化が中心的な貢献である。

Code and data availability

The supplied blocks describe EpiVision/EpiBrain, annotated microscopy datasets (EpiDataset), a 173,335-entry QA corpus, and tomato stomatal density GWAS data, but contain no public deposit, availability statement, or authors' URL for any dataset, code, model, or supplement. The only URL is the preprint DOI itself.

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