Binder, S.; Hossain, K.; Bucksch, A.; Fok, M.

Real-time measurements of crop root architecture can overcome limitations faced by plant breeders when developing climate-resilient plants. Due to current measurement methods failing to continuously monitor root growth in a non-destructive and scalable fashion, we propose a first in-soil sensing system based on fiber Bragg gratings. The sensing system continuously logs three-dimensional strain generated by a growing pseudo-root. Two ResNet models confirm the utility of in-soil fiber Bragg grating sensors and predict root width and depth from sensor output data and achieve accuracies of 92% and 93% respectively. Our presented prototype has potential prospects to go beyond measuring root parameters and sense its surrounding soil environment.