Images of Arabidopsis and lettuce seedings grown in mircogravity conditions using the RPM Mini-phytotron experimental setup.

In order to study altered root growth to microgravity environments, we adopted the use of commercially available desktop Random Positioning Machine (RPM) (version 2.0 Airbus Defense and Space, the Netherlands B.V., Leiden, the Netherlands). The dataset includes the scanned images of the Arabidopsis and lettuce seedlings grown on the RPM fitted the mini-phytotron. Please see Readme excel file for description of images

Mini-phytotron description

The mini-phytotron was developed to be mounted on the RPM platform and included a uni-diectional LED white light source for the plants growing inside. The entire apparatus could then be run in darkness (using black opaque cloth) to eliminate influence of external ambient light. The mini-phytotron has five slots to allow simultaneous growth of up to 60 seedlings in square petri dishes that contain solid agar media. The plates are placed in a vertical orientation within the growing chamber to allow the roots to grow along the surface without pentetrating the agar medium. This allows the study of root growth response to microgravity conditions. In parallel, an identical mini-phytotoron containing the same number of seedings was set up as 1 g control condition alongside RPM.

Roots were measured manually using ImageJ software (https://imagej.net/software/fiji/downloads) to calculate root lengths and HGI, VGI and root straightness displacements.

The raw 3D printing files (.stl) for the mini-phytotron and the design of LED strip circuitry (.dxf) are included in this dataset.