Innovations - Plant Tracer - A Program to Track and Quantify Plant Movement from Cellphone Captured Time-Lapse Movies

Oct 15, 2026

Despite the fundamental importance of plants, student interest in plant biology is declining as technology pulls attention away from nature. The work presents Plant Tracer, a MATLAB-based program that quantifies time-lapse videos of plant movement recorded with smartphones. Results distinguish altered movement in Arabidopsis inflorescence stems between the pgm-1 mutant and wildtype, showing reduced gravitropism and circumnutation in pgm-1. Plant Tracer is proposed as a biology-lab instructional tool to quantify plant movement genetics.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryHealthcare

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time20 min

AccessFree to download

Innovations

Plant Tracer: Program for Tracking Plant Movement

Quantifying Movement from Time-Lapse Videos

Educational Lab Using Smartphones

Background: Tropisms, Gravitropism, and Circumnutation

Arabidopsis Model and pgm-1 Mutant

Innovations Plant Tracer: A Program to Track and Quantify Plant Movement from Cellphone Captured Time-Lapse Movies Angelica M. Guercio, B.A.1, Yixiang Mao, M. S.2, Victor N. D. Carvalho, M. S.3, Jiazhen Zhang, B. S.4, Changyuan Li, M. S.5, Zheng Ren, M. S.6, Winnie Zhao7, Yao Wang, Ph.D.8, and Eric D. Brenner, Ph.D.9* 1Department of Plant Biology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, 2Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Tandon School of Engineering, New York University, Brooklyn, NY, 11201 , 3Center for Magnetic Resonance in Biology and Medicine, CNRS UMR 7339, Aix Marseille University, Marseille, France, 13385, 4Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. Dongguan, Guangdong, China, 523808 , 5Google, LLC, Mountain View, California, 94043, 6Dialogic Inc., Parsippany, NJ, 07054 , 7Department of Biology, Pace University, New York, NY 10038 , 8Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Tandon School of Engineering, New York University, Brooklyn, NY, 11201, 9Department of Biology, Pace University, New York, NY 10038 *Corresponding Author: [ebrenner@pace.edu](ebrenner@pace.edu) Abstract Despite the fundamental importance of plants to our very survival, student interest in plant biology is in decline as technology draws us further away from nature. Here we introduce Plant Tracer ([http://www.planttracer.com](http://www.planttracer.com)), a Matlab-based program, which can quantify time-lapse videos of plant movement. We demonstrate that Plant Tracer can be used to distinguish altered movement qualities in the inflorescence (flowering) stem in the Arabidopsis pgm-1 (phosphoglucomutase) mutant when compared to wildtype, providing a genetic platform for students to evaluate how plants sense and respond to gravity and circumnutation (the back-and-forth swaying of plant organs) . We show that both gravitropism and circumnutation is diminished in the pgm-1 mutant when compared to wildtype. In this way, Plant Tracer is a promising instructional tool for biology labs to quantify the genetics of plant movement using smartphones. Keywords plant biology, plant movement, Plant Tracer, software, movement quantification, movement tracking, gravitropism, circumnutation, Arabidopsis thaliana Introduction Time-lapse photography has proven itself to be a promising instructional tool in biology lectures to stimulate interest in plants, enabling student visualization of the complexities of plant development and movement (Fitzgerald, 2012; Hangarter, 2000; Harrison-Pitaniello, 2013; Stark, 2008) . Building upon this technology, a plant time-lapse photography educational lab was created where students use their personal digital devices to record and visualize movement in the flowering stems of the genetic model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana (Brenner, 2017) . Arabidopsis thaliana exhibits rapid positional changes in the inflorescence in a little more than an hour (Brenner, 2017; Niinuma, 2005; Masson, 2002) . This active learning lab not only increased student interest in plants but also inspired nearly half of the students to share their smart phone derived videos with friends and family (Brenner, 2017), effectively amplifying the educational impact of this approach. While this method of having students create plant movement time-lapse movies was successful at increasing engagement, it yielded only qualitative, not quantitative data, hence, the development of software that not only tracks, but also analyzes plant movement is the logical next step for students to directly become active in the field of plant-movement research. Developing this method is especially useful in that currently available plant movement-tracking software is targeted exclusively to academic research laboratories, thus necessitating the use of expensive cameras, and requiring knowledge of computer coding languages (Stolarz, 2014; Wagner, 2017; Greenham, 2015) . In addition, most existing plant movement tracking software is merely limited to examining o

FAQs

What is Plant Tracer designed to do?

Plant Tracer is a MATLAB-based program that quantifies time-lapse videos of plant movement, enabling quantitative analysis rather than only qualitative observation.

How does Plant Tracer support teaching in biology labs?

It allows students to record plant movement with smartphones and use the tool to quantify movement changes, helping them evaluate how plants sense and respond to gravity.

What movement differences are reported between pgm-1 mutant and wildtype?

The pgm-1 mutant shows diminished gravitropism and reduced circumnutation compared with wildtype in Arabidopsis inflorescence stems.

Oct 15, 2026

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