Plants cannot change as fast as the climate.
Plants that fit better to future climate will be more important to us than ever before. One promising candidate for these plants are the so-called C4-plants. An important crop and C4-plant is maize. Researchers breed new genotypes to find the one that can handle future climate conditions the best. Therefore, the maize genotypes must be examined under different conditions.
Due to climate change, the climate warms up and gets dryer in many regions all over the world. Plants cannot change as fast as the climate. Thus, plants that fit better to future climate will be more important to us than ever before. One promising candidate for these plants are the so-called C4-plants. They can absorb and store more CO2 than other plants through which they are able to do photosynthesis even under hot and dry conditions.
An important crop and C4-plant is maize. Researchers breed new genotypes to find the one that can handle future climate conditions the best.
Therefore, the maize genotypes must be examined under different conditions. At Fraunhofer IIS, division EZRT in Fürth, Germany, the root growth is analyzed. Normally, it is necessary to excavate a plant to analyze the roots. However, this has the disadvantage, that the plant gets damaged. It is not possible to analyze the roots several times at different growth stages.
Due to that at the Fraunhofer institute the plants are not dug out, but scanned by X-ray. According to current research, X-rays in the used energy range is no harm to the plant and makes it possible to look into the soil at the roots. Therefore, maize plants are planted in pots and grow in a climate chamber under controlled climate and soil conditions comparable to on a field. The plants can move around on a conveyor belt system and are scheduled to automatic watering and X-ray computed tomography (CT) measurements. That means many X-ray images of the plant pot are taken while it is rotating. From all these 2D X-ray images, a 3D CT-volume is calculated. With that, it is possible to have a look into the pot, slice by slice.
For analyzing the maize roots, the roots must be separated virtually from soil in the 3D CT-volume. This is done by an algorithm called RootForce, which automatically detects roots. In the end, a 3D volume of the roots is obtained for every measured plant at different growth stadia. Now, it is visible how different each maize genotype is growing over time belowground.
Furthermore, it is possible to examine how each maize genotype reacts on changing climate conditions and soil nutrients. That will help us to find more robust maize plants for the future.
