LAUSR

Root systems are the critical organs that provide all water and nutrients to the plant, but how they occupy the soil in three dimensions is poorly understood. Root system architecture (RSA) is a difficult phenomenon to evaluate in meaningful detail in situ, and a wide range of proxy strategies have been developed to measure RSA and the traits that contribute to it, both in the lab and the field [1,2]. Successful measurement of any trait that contributes to understanding RSA involves prediction of how roots will behave in the field under a range of environmental pressures. Progress has been made in that direction using gel-based optical projection tomography to measure root growth at early stages that successfully predicted RSA development in mature field-grown plants of the same variety [3].