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.