Measurement of heterotrophic plant growth is important for evaluating seed or seedling vigor. Hand measurement of large numbers of germinants and seedlings is tedious, can injure young plants, and is often inexact when curved roots are involved. Using the Cobb-Jones germination method with a digitizing tablet, a personal computer, apparatus, and methods we developed, reduces the time, tedium, injury, and guesswork often associated with hand measurements. Evaluation of measurement precision using our methods indicates that repeated measurements of individual germinants/seedlings will have average differences that are less than 1.0 mm.
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