GiA Roots: software for the high throughput analysis of plant root system architecture

BMC Plant Biology

Table 4 Comparison of root system analysis software

	GiA Roots	EZ-Rhizo	SmartRoot
License	free, closed-source	free, closed-source	free, closed-source
Platform	Mac, Windows	Windows only	cross-platform (an ImageJ plugin)
Language	C++	C++	Java
Root tracing	only automated	manual and automated	manual and semi-automated
Batch processing	built-in	no	no
Extensibility	C++ Plugin-API	none	none
Database support	no, but Excel compliant export	SQL	SQL

A feature comparison of GiA Roots with two free, recently released alternatives: EZ-Rhizo [24] and SmartRoot [39]. Note that traits available for estimation in GiA Roots are predominantly geometric, whereas EZ-Rhizo and SmartRoot estimate traits that are predominantly related to the connectivity of the root system. Hence, the traits estimated in each software do not necessarily coincide; more details can be found in the original papers.

ISSN: 1471-2229