The platform - enables identification of phenotypic diversity in root and shoot growth traits of agar grown plants.

Background: Root system architecture and especially its plasticity in acclimation to variable environments play a crucial role in the ability of plants to explore and acquire efficiently soil resources and ensure plant productivity. Non-destructive measurement methods are indispensable to quantify dynamic growth traits. For closing the phenotyping gap, we have developed an automated phenotyping platform, -, for non-destructive characterization of root and shoot traits of plants grown in transparent agar medium.

GROWSCREEN-Rhizo is a novel phenotyping robot enabling simultaneous measurements of root and shoot growth for plants grown in soil-filled rhizotrons.

Root systems play an essential role in ensuring plant productivity. Experiments conducted in controlled environments and simulation models suggest that root geometry and responses of root architecture to environmental factors should be studied as a priority. However, compared with aboveground plant organs, roots are not easily accessible by non-invasive analyses and field research is still based almost completely on manual, destructive methods.

Simultaneous phenotyping of leaf growth and chlorophyll fluorescence via GROWSCREEN FLUORO allows detection of stress tolerance in Arabidopsis thaliana and other rosette plants.

Stress caused by environmental factors evokes dynamic changes in plant phenotypes. In this study, we deciphered simultaneously the reaction of plant growth and chlorophyll fluorescence related parameters using a novel approach which combines existing imaging technologies (GROWSCREEN FLUORO). Three different abiotic stress situations were investigated demonstrating the benefit of this approach to distinguish between effects related to (1) growth, (2) chlorophyll-fluorescence, or (3) both of these aspects of the phenotype.

Non-invasive determination of plant biomass with microwave resonators.

Non-invasive and rapid determination of plant biomass would be beneficial for a number of research aims. Here, we present a novel device to non-invasively determine plant water content as a proxy for plant biomass. It is based on changes of dielectric properties inside a microwave cavity resonator induced by inserted plant material.

Arabidopsis, a model to study biological functions of isoprene emission?

The volatile hemiterpene isoprene is emitted from plants and can affect atmospheric chemistry. Although recent studies indicate that isoprene can enhance thermotolerance or quench oxidative stress, the underlying physiological mechanisms are largely unknown. In this work, Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), a natural nonemitter of isoprene and the model plant for functional plant analyses, has been constitutively transformed with the isoprene synthase gene (PcISPS) from Grey poplar (Populus x canescens).

Dynamics of seedling growth acclimation towards altered light conditions can be quantified via GROWSCREEN: a setup and procedure designed for rapid optical phenotyping of different plant species.

Using a novel setup, we assessed how fast growth of Nicotiana tabacum seedlings responds to alterations in the light regime and investigated whether starch-free mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana show decreased growth potential at an early developmental stage. Leaf area and relative growth rate were measured based on pictures from a camera automatically placed above an array of 120 seedlings. Detection of total seedling leaf area was performed via global segmentation of colour images for preset thresholds of the parameters hue, saturation and value.

Cytokinin import rate as a signal for photosynthetic acclimation to canopy light gradients.

Plants growing in dense canopies are exposed to vertical light gradients and show photosynthetic acclimation at the whole-plant level, resulting in efficient photosynthetic carbon gain. We studied the role of cytokinins transported through the transpiration stream as one of probably multiple signals for photosynthetic acclimation to light gradients using both tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) and Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). We show that substantial variation in leaf transpiration parallels the light gradient in tobacco canopies and experimental reduction of the transpiration rate of a leaf, independent of light, is sufficient to reduce photosynthetic capacity in both species, as well as transcript levels of the small subunit of Rubisco (rbcS) gene in Arabidopsis.