Spatial and Texture Analysis of Root System distribution with Earth mover’s Distance (STARSEED)

PURPOSE: Root system architectures are complex and challenging to characterize effectively for agronomic and ecological discovery. METHODS: We propose a new method, Spatial and Texture Analysis of Root SystEm distribution with Earth mover’s Distance (STARSEED), for comparing root system distributions that incorporates spatial information through a novel application of the Earth Mover’s Distance (EMD). RESULTS: We illustrate that the approach captures the response of sesame root systems for different genotypes and soil moisture levels. STARSEED provides quantitative and visual insights into changes that occur in root architectures across experimental treatments. CONCLUSION: STARSEED can be generalized to other plants and provides insight into root system architecture development and response to varying growth conditions not captured by existing root architecture metrics and models. The code and data for our experiments are publicly available: https://github.com/GatorSense/STARSEED. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13007-022-00974-z.