Abstract
Root growth potential (RGP) is a popular physiological indicator used to evaluate seedling vigor. However, the time scale used in the RGP test is the order of days, which leads to poor performance of the RGP method. We propose an optical interference method, called statistical interferometry, to measure minute root elongation at a sub-nanometer scale, which can decrease the time used in measuring RGP. The time scale of this method is also 104 times less than that of the RGP method. Because we can measure the length of root elongation continuously, we can compute the root elongation rate (RER), which is the variety of the length of root elongation per second. Continuous monitoring can help determine the quality of Masson pine seedling as soon as possible. To show the effectiveness of our proposed method, we designed an experiment, in which we applied different water stresses to our collected Masson pine seedlings and acquired two groups of pines, representing two different qualities: one stressed by water and one not. After measuring the RER of the groups in our experiments, we found that RER is interrelated with the quality of seedlings.
Highlights
In Southern China, Masson pine plays an important role in forest restoration, but planting it is not a trivial undertaking
The large variance may be caused by some conditions, such as the cycle phenomena of Masson pine seedlings
One root is from a Masson pine seedling in a water stress environment(dry soil); the other is from an environment without water stress(wet soil)
Summary
In Southern China, Masson pine plays an important role in forest restoration, but planting it is not a trivial undertaking. At the first stage of forest restoration, intensive nursery and silviculture practices are required to ensure seedling health [1, 2]. As a part of these practices, seedling quality is important in ensuring successful forest restoration. Various seedling quality assessment methods have been designed and applied, including methods to measure morphological and physiological plant attributes [2,3,4]. The root system is important in seedling quality assessment because roots can help a plant to uptake water. Root growth has long been recognized as being important in enhancing the establishment and growth of seedlings [9,10,11]. With rapidly expanding root systems, seedlings can mitigate water stress [9] and quickly establish a proper water balance
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