Measuring Plant Root Growth

摘要

Plants represent a significant part of our natural environment and their detailed study becomes more and more interesting (also economically) because of their importance for mankind as a source of food and/or energy. One of the most characteristic biological processes in plant life is their growth; it serves as a good indicator for the compatibility of a plant with varying environmental conditions. For the analysis of such influences, measuring the growth of plant roots is a widely used technique. Unfortunately, traditional schemes of measuring roots with a ruler or scanner are extremely time-consuming, hardly reproducible, and do not allow to follow growth over time. Image analysis can provide a solution. In this paper, we describe a complete image analysis system, from imaging issues to the extraction of various biological features for a subsequent statistical analysis. This opens a variety of new possibilities for biologists, including many economical applications in the study of agricultural crops.