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By default, RhizoVision Explorer will report lengths, areas, and volumes in pixel units. To return physical units, the user must provide information about the physical size of a pixel in their image. This guide explains how to do that, and is generalizable to other scanner or camera-based platforms. If you use this guide to set up a scanner, scan roots, and report measurements in presentations or publications, please cite this repository.

For RhizoVision Explorer, we recommend imaging equipment that uses a backlight to capture a silhouette of the roots. The Epson Perfection 12000XL Photo Scanner with transparency unit is a large format scanner with an approximately 30 cm x 40 cm scan area and is ideal for this use case. This document goes over how to set it up for root scanning. If you use this guide to set up a scanner, scan roots, and report measurements in presentations or publications, please cite this repository.

Nutrient use efficiency (NUE) is typically measured as the ratio of yield to soil nutrient availability but ignores contributions of underlying plant traits. Relevant plant traits can be grouped as root acquisition efficiency, shoot radiation use efficiency, and plant metabolic efficiency. The intentional integration of these traits will lead to synergistic improvements of NUE. Recent progress in trait-focused research includes phenotyping root nutrient uptake rates and respiration, engineering reduced photorespiration, and identification of nutrient assimilation pathways. Traits need to be conceptualized in agricultural systems contexts to improve synchrony of plant demand and soil supply of nutrients, including consideration of crop mixtures. Use of simulation modeling and multi-objective optimization will allow accelerating NUE gains beyond selection for a single ratio.

Summaryplantcell;29/9/tpc.117.tt0917/FIG1F1fig1One of roots' key roles is to secure access to water and nutrients for the plant, often in a highly heterogeneous and challenging environment. To cope with such function, root systems have evolved as highly plastic, responsive and diverse organs. However, due to technical constraints, root research has long been stuck in its infancy. This teaching tool discusses the relatively young field of root system architecture quantification. It introduces the concepts of phenes (like genes, but referring to the phenotype), and architectural concepts including morphology, geometry, and topology. It concludes by discussing the practical considerations linked to the root system architecture quantification (including growth and sampling methods), and different data analysis methods. Posted September 20, 2017.Click HERE to access Teaching Tool Components.