There’s a World Going on Underground: Imaging Technologies to Understand Root Growth Dynamics and Rhizosphere Interactions

Our ability to harness the power of plant genomics for basic and applied science depends on how well and how fast we can quantify the phenotypic ramifications of genetic variation. Plants can be considered from many vantage points: at scales from cells to organs, over the course of development or evolution, and from biophysical, physiological, and ecological perspectives. In all of these ways, our understanding of plant form and function is greatly limited by our ability to study subterranean structures and processes. The limitations to accessing this knowledge are well known – soil is opaque, roots are morphologically complex, and root growth can be heavily influenced by a myriad of environmental factors. Nonetheless, recent technological innovations in imaging science have generated a renewed focus on roots and thus new opportunities to understand the plant as a whole.

The Topp Lab is interested in crop root system growth dynamics and function in response to environmental stresses such as drought, rhizosphere interactions, and as a consequence of artificial selection for agronomically important traits such as nitrogen uptake and high plant density. Studying roots requires the development of imaging technologies, computational infrastructure, and statistical methods that can capture and analyze morphologically complex networks over time and at high-throughput. The lab uses several imaging tools (optical, X-ray CT, PET, etc.) along with quantitative genetics and molecular biology to understand the dynamics of root growth and physiology. We aim to understand the relationships among root traits that can be effectively measured both in controlled laboratory environments and in the field, and to identify genes and gene networks that control root, and ultimately whole plant architectural features useful for crop improvement.