A Large Root Phenome Dataset Wide-Opened the Potential for Underground Breeding in Soybean

The root is the most critical plant organ for water and nutrient acquisition. Although the root is vital for water and nutrient uptake, the diverse root characters of soybean still need to be identified owing to the difficulty of root sampling. In this study, we used 150 wild and 50 cultivated soybean varieties to collect root image samples. We analyzed root morphological traits using acquired-image. Except for the main total length (MTL), the root morphological traits for most cultivated and wild plants were significantly different. According to correlation analysis, the wild and cultivated plants showed a significant correlation among total root length (TRL), projected area (PA), forks, total lateral length (TLL), link average diameter, and MTL. In particular, TRL was highly correlated with PA in both cultivated (0.92) and wild (0.82) plants compared with between MTL (0.43 for cultivated and 0.27 for wild) and TLL (0.82 for cultivated and 0.52 for wild). According to principal component analysis results, both plants could be separated; however, there was some overlap of the traits among the wild and cultivated individuals from some regions. Nevertheless, variation among the cultivated plants was higher than that found in the wild plants. Furthermore, three groups, including MTL, TLL, and the remaining traits, could explain all the variances.