Corona-Lopez Diego D J, Sommer Sarah, Rolfe Stephen A, Podd Frank, Grieve Bruce D
1e-Agri Sensors Centre, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL UK.
2Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN UK.
Plant Methods. 2019 May 21;15:49. doi: 10.1186/s13007-019-0438-4. eCollection 2019.
Plant roots are complex, three-dimensional structures that play a central role in anchorage, water and nutrient acquisition, storage and interaction with rhizosphere microbes. Studying the development of the plant root system architecture is inherently difficult as soil is not a transparent medium.
This study uses electrical impedance tomography (EIT) to visualise oilseed rape root development in horticultural compost. The development of healthy, control plants and those infected with the gall-forming pathogen, -the causative agent of clubroot disease-were compared. EIT measurements were used to quantify the development of the root system and distinguish between control and infected plants at the onset of gall formation, approximately 20 days after inoculation. Although clear and stark differences between healthy and infected plants were obtained by careful (and hence laborious) packing of the growth medium in layers within the pots; clubroot identification is still possible without a laborious vessel filling protocol.
These results demonstrate the utility of EIT as a low-cost, non-invasive, non-destructive method for characterising root system architecture and plant-pathogen interactions in opaque growth media. As such it offers advantages over other root characterisation techniques and has the potential to act as a low-cost tool for plant phenotyping.
植物根系是复杂的三维结构，在固着、水分和养分获取、储存以及与根际微生物相互作用中起着核心作用。由于土壤不是透明介质，研究植物根系结构的发育本质上具有挑战性。
本研究使用电阻抗断层成像（EIT）技术来可视化园艺堆肥中油菜根系的发育情况。比较了健康对照植株和感染形成根肿病病原体（根肿病致病因子）的植株的发育情况。EIT测量用于量化根系发育，并在接种后约20天，即根肿形成初期区分对照植株和感染植株。尽管通过在花盆内将生长介质小心（因此费力）地分层填充，健康植株和感染植株之间获得了明显而显著的差异；但即使没有费力的容器填充方案，仍有可能识别根肿病。
这些结果证明了EIT作为一种低成本、非侵入性、非破坏性方法在表征不透明生长介质中根系结构和植物-病原体相互作用方面的实用性。因此，它比其他根系表征技术具有优势，并且有潜力作为一种低成本的植物表型分析工具。
