Monitoring plant root health is critical for sustainable and productive agriculture as root disease and the poor physical condition of roots can impact food productivity and sustainability.
A new tool called RootCheck aims to make it easier to monitor plant health by interpreting images of recently excavated plant roots partway through their growth cycle thereby making the lives of those working in sustainable agriculture easier.
Once completed, the project will be the first of its kind in the sector to be applied in real world field settings.
Team lead Dr. Richard Nair from Trinity College Dublin said:
“The way that we are trying to do this is to take the very laborious task of digging up roots and cleaning the soil off them, which takes ages before you can even measure anything.
This will speed up the process by applying AI methods to interpret images taken partway through that process so farmers don’t have to do it all manually.”
Following consultation with stakeholders and farmers, the project is now focusing on how to introduce more diverse multi-species into plant roots.
There is a major push in Ireland right now to improve the functionality and the health of the soil, and this is normally done by adding extra nitrogen to the roots.
“However while this is good for productivity it causes all kinds of problems which impact the general soil health. RootCheck will be able to assess the roots in this context and get a better understanding of what is actually going on there.
You want the the plants to get hold of all that extra fertilizer or slurry so it ends up in the plant rather than being washed off”, Dr. Nair explained.
Accessibility to the farmer is a key component of the project and it aims to develop the technology as well as the smartphone app for the farmer to use whenever they like on their farm.
It’s also hoped that farmers will be able to walk around their farm and monitor specific areas of land as well as the overall farm itself to ensure each part is managed correctly.
RootCheck is funded under the National Challenge Fund which was established under the government's National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), funded by the EU's Recovery and Resilience Facility. The Fund is coordinated and administered by Research Ireland (formerly Science Foundation Ireland).
The research is being carried out at Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin and the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute.
- Project locations
- Ireland