Abstract:The root phenotypes of different vigorous maize seeds vary a lot, and imaging roots of growing maize is a noninvasive, affordable and high throughput way to detect it. However, due to the block of soil, acquiring a complete image is difficult. An algorithm was proposed to repair incomplete root images and based on it, root fast noninvasive phenotyping detection can be realized. Firstly, a cuboid transparent container without cover was developed as mesocosms and the maize seeds were planted in it. The maize roots grew in soil against two acrylic plastic surfaces due to the press of the small growing area to acquire more root details during roots visualization and imaging. Even though, parts of the roots were occluded by the soil which meant that it was tough to extract the information of root general physical construction. For recovering gaps from disconnected root segments, corrosion growth algorithm was proposed based on the physiological characteristics of hydrotropism, geostrophic and continuity with three steps which were root image thinning, corrosion and growing processing, respectively. The experiments indicated that maize phenotyping parameters were negatively correlated with seed aging days. And specifically, root number, root length, root width and root extension length of unaged and 14dayaged maize seeds were decreased from 14.80, 83.50mm, 1.53mm and 82.70mm to 4.38, 36.90mm, 1.38mm and 54.6mm, and the growing speed of them were changed from 1.68 per day, 8.80mm/d, 0.06mm/d, 9.0mm/d to 0.70 per day, 4.3mm/d, 0.05mm/d and 5.70mm/d, respectively. Whereas root extension angle is basically irrelevant with the level of maize seed aging. The developed cuboid transparent container without cover can push each root growing along the wall of the container which helped to acquire more root information. The presented novel corrosion growth algorithm can recover the missing parts, even for big gaps, of maize roots effectively according to root morphological properties. The experiments showed that the proposed method can be applied to evaluate the vigor of maize seeds which had vast application prospect in high throughput root phenotyping area.