b'How This will Change Soybean Breeding Now that he and his colleagues have exposed the Now that this project has been published, Singh believesextent of genetic diversity that exists in important root it will begin to shift the traditional crop breeding focustraitsand found that the majority of North American from being solely focused on above-ground traits (easilysoybean varieties are limited in root trait diversityobservable and perceived as sufficient to understand andSingh believes its imperative for researchers to investigate predict plant performance) to the whole plant.if root traits have been optimized in commercial varieties, or if there is a huge untapped resource of root trait varia-tion out there. We also need to determine how the root traits influ-ROOT TRAITS ARE AMONG THE MOST DIFFICULT TOence yield and other important traits, he says. Think of this as matching the chassis to the engine motor so both STUDY IN PLANT SCIENCES. work in unison to deliver top and consistent speeds.Asheesh Singh Seyed Vahid Mirnezami, who was part of the project during his PhD studies and currently works in Bayers Crop Science division in Missouri, says ML and deep learning coupled with image processing tools could Focusing on above-ground traits is effective, but italso be applied to measure other crop traits, and above-completely misses the whole other world of plant rootsground traits could be correlated with the root traits. and their anatomical, morphological and physiologi- Indeed, Singhs PhD student Clayton Carley is now work-cal traits, he says. Due to the technical difficulties anding on this. resource intensiveness of observing root traits, we haveThe team is also conducting more genetic studies, not put a lot of focus on them. But, with continual inno- building their understanding of the optimal combina-vations in imaging platforms and computer vision/MLtion of RSA traits and root nodulation, and exploring the methods, the research community can overcome severalconnections between controlled environment results and of these challenges. field-based observations. STRONG GENETICS.VIGOROUS PRODUCTION.DEPENDABLE GROWTH. LEARN MORE ALLIANCESEED.COM NOVEMBER 2020 GERMINATION.CA 39'