For plant biologists, understanding how plants grow and interact with soil is vital for selecting resilient crops that can efficiently take up water and nutrients. But how do you monitor what is happening underground?

To address this challenge, a team from KAUST has developed a low-cost system for imaging plant growth dynamics, noninvasively and at high throughput.

Unlike other imaging tools, which are costly and stationary, the new system called MutipleXLab, is modular, mobile and, at a low cost, can continuously monitor thousands of seeds, from germination to root development.

“Our system combines high-throughput phenotyping with high resolution, a common bottleneck in plant phenomics,” says Ph.D. student Vinicius Lube.

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Image: Combining computer vision, pattern recognition technologies and machine learning allows for the capture of dynamic biological processes, such as plant root growth, at high resolution and low cost. The root (on the right circled in the image above) was created using photogrammetry at the root level for the first time using "4D profilometry."
© 2022 KAUST; Vinicius Lube