Plant Screening Tool
- Detailed Technology Description
- None
- Others
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- *Abstract
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Our novel "penetrometer" rhizobox has been designed and tested to simultaneously provide control over humidity and provide feedback on root growth. Briefly, the corn primary root is confined to grow in a narrow guiding channel (< 3 mm diameter) filled with humidified air (i.e. aeroponics) or nutrient solution (i.e. hydroponics). The root tip starts to experience the mechanical impedance imposed by a spring as it grows downwards. The mesh tube is displaced to allow investigating the relationship between the root elongation and the penetration impedance. The degree of spring compression will be precalibrated in terms of pressure (e.g. kPa) before the plant is transferred, without the need to monitor the pressure during the actual plant growth. The proposed platform is low-cost, scalable, and adaptable to study other abiotic factors (salt, temperature), which can be extendable to many areas including metabolic engineering, pathology and genetics. An array of these platforms has a large potential for low-cost, high-throughput characterization of genotypic crop diversity, for targeted, rapid screening of stress-tolerant crops.
- *Principal Investigator
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Name: Chang-Soo Kim, Associate Professor
Department:
- Country/Region
- USA
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