NON-INVASIVE PHENOTYPING OF ROOTS IN THE FIELD
If plant blindness is a thing, then it seems reasonable that root blindness is also a thing. If we don’t notice plants as much as we do animals because said plants don’t move and capture our attention, then the root systems of these plants are even more invisible.
ROOT SYSTEMS AND DIGITALISATION OF AGRICULTURE
Another if: If digitalisation of agriculture is about increasing the spatial and temporal resolution of data available for decisions, then there is potentially a lot of progress that can be made around root systems given they are generally only observed once per year at most. The modal rate of observation is probably 0. The tap root of root crops is given a lot more attention than 0, but their entire root systems and root systems of most other crops are only observed by hard-core scientists like Adnane Bargaz (shout out to my old room-mate Adnane who’s jokes about not taking himself or science too seriously sit firmly in my memory) or the Hunts (shout to my old neighbours who recently received a well deserved award for their hard-core contributions to agricultural science). To realise those gains, sensors that can measure root systems are needed.
Here enters the cataylst for this post. The (open access) article:
Michels, V., Weigand, M., Lärm, L., Muller, O. and Kemna, A. (2025), Non-Invasive Phenotyping of Sugar Beet and Maize Roots Using Field-Scale Spectral Electrical Impedance Tomography. Plant, Cell & Environment, 48: 7588-7604. https://doi.org/10.1111/pce.70049
Non-Invasive Phenotyping of Sugar Beet and Maize Roots Using Field-Scale Spectral Electrical Impedance Tomography
This article reports on the testing of sEIT for measuring something around root systems as they develop in-situ, in the field. “Something” as they are not strictly measuring anything about the root directly, but their electrical root index (ERI) is shown to correlate with root biomass diversity.
The article hasn’t been read in detail but all the sections have been scanned, and it looks like there is something in this.
WHICH DECISIONS CAN BE SUPPORTED
Scientists are probably the primary likely users of this technology. Some (borad) uses that come to mind include:
- Pre-harvest root size in root crops for use in assessing harvest yield development.
- Comparisons of varieties
- Understanding how different agronomic practices affect root development
- Understanding links between root development and above ground harvest yield.
All of these broad uses have many specific use cases.
If a farmer was to employ this system in their field, would they benefit? Well, if there is a particular root development aspect that is linked to harvest yield and which they can manage, then yes. Good examples of within-season decisions are not forthcoming. But if the farmer is interested in understanding if their managment decisions have impacted root development, and they are patient, . That is, roots develop slowly and their development is difficult to impact in-season, so sEIT might be good for monitoring and translation to strategic decisions, but less useful for helping make that next tactical decisions.
I think that regenerative agriculture would be interested in this.
COST-BENEFIT
No idea. There is no indication in the article of what the sEIT system costs. But they do seem to have a lot of sensors, so to hazard a guess, maybe not that much. Or maybe that should be read the other way around – one needs a sensor every 25 cm, so it is expensive to set up.
The biggest cost is likely the years more of research needed to get this tool to a plug-and-play level.
This is one of those posts that will likely be updated with time, as more articles catch my attention.