10.6084/m9.figshare.1379862.v1 Guillaume Lobet Guillaume Lobet Introducing Root System Markup Language, a new toolbox to link experimental data with simulation figshare 2015 root image analysis modelling Botany 2015-04-15 10:31:14 Presentation https://figshare.com/articles/presentation/Introducing_Root_System_Markup_Language_a_new_toolbox_to_link_experimental_data_with_simulation/1379862 <p>The number of image analysis tools supporting the extraction of architectural features of root systems and of explicit 3D root models has increased in recent years. We describe the Root System Markup Language (RSML), which has been designed to overcome two major challenges: (1) to enable portability of root architecture data between different software tools (modelling-imaging-data analysis) in an easy and interoperable manner, allowing seamless collaborative work; and (2) to provide a standard format upon which to base central repositories that will soon arise following the expanding worldwide root phenotyping effort. RSML follows the XML standard to store two- or three-dimensional image metadata, plant and root properties and geometries, continuous functions along individual root paths, and a suite of annotations at the image, plant, or root scale at one or several time points. Plant ontologies are used to describe botanical entities that are relevant at the scale of root system architecture. An XML schema describes the features and constraints of RSML, and open-source packages have been developed in several languages (R, Excel, Java, Python and C++) to enable researchers to integrate RSML files into popular research workflow.</p>