关键词: 作物, 根系表型, 室内鉴定, 田间鉴定, 评价方法

Abstract: Roots are the vital organs for fixing the plant shoots and absorbing soil water and nutrients. The phenotypic characteristics of roots directly affect crop productivity and adaptability. Optimizing root phenotypes is considered to be one of the important ways to achieve the second “Green Revolution”. However, the invisibility, complexity and plasticity of root system greatly restrict the efficiency of root phenotyping, which makes the root optimization process lag far behind that of aboveground organs. With the rapid development of new technologies, i.e. spectral imaging, machine learning and three-dimensional reconstruction, the approaches to phenotyping roots gradually changed from traditional sampling observation to in-situ, nondestructive and automatic detection, and the evaluation basis expanded from two-dimensional morphological indices to three-dimensional parameters, which promoted the efficiency of root phenotyping and dramatically enriched the data of root phenotype. Meanwhile, the massive data exhibited problems, such as data redundancy and low use efficiency of information resources, which put forward new requirements, i.e. standardization and shareability, for root phenotype studies. This paper summarized the principles and technical keys of main approaches to phenotyping roots, and compared systematically in terms of precision, cost and throughput. The commonly used software for quantification of root phenotype were listed out from the aspects of license, operating platform, analysis mode and so on. The important research direction in the future was put forward, that is, to develop effective approaches to phenotyping roots in the field, to establish the evaluation system for root plasticity, to strengthen the identification and utilization of root anatomical characters, to strengthen the application of molecular detection techniques in root phenotyping, and to promote standardization of root phenotyping techniques and data sharing. The aim is to provide reference for the reasonable selection and improvement of approaches to phenotyping crop root system, so as to promote crop root improvement.

Key words: crop, root phenotype, phenotyping in the laboratory, phenotyping in the field, evaluation method