Characterization of Cover Crop Rooting Types from Integration of Rhizobox Imaging and Root Atlas Information.

Plant root systems are essential for sustainable agriculture, conveying resource-efficient genotypes and species with benefits to soil ecosystem functions. Targeted selection of species/genotypes depends on available root system information. Currently there is no standardized approach for comprehensive root system characterization, suggesting the need for data integration across methods and sources.

A statistical approach to root system classification.

Plant root systems have a key role in ecology and agronomy. In spite of fast increase in root studies, still there is no classification that allows distinguishing among distinctive characteristics within the diversity of rooting strategies. Our hypothesis is that a multivariate approach for "plant functional type" identification in ecology can be applied to the classification of root systems.