{"id":5230,"date":"2019-09-13T07:56:07","date_gmt":"2019-09-13T12:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/?p=5230"},"modified":"2026-04-07T12:12:40","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T16:12:40","slug":"alina-zare-presents-plant-root-analysis-with-multiple-instance-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/2019\/09\/13\/alina-zare-presents-plant-root-analysis-with-multiple-instance-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Alina Zare Presents \u201cPlant Root Analysis with Multiple Instance Learning\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2686\" src=\"https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/759\/2015\/11\/zare.png\" alt=\"a picture of dr alina zare\" width=\"300\" height=\"402\" srcset=\"https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/759\/2015\/11\/zare.png 300w, https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/759\/2015\/11\/zare-224x300.png 224w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, Dr Alina Zare presented at the University of Florida Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department&#8217;s weekly seminar.\u00a0 In her talk, titled &#8220;Plant Root Analysis with Multiple Instance Learning&#8221;, Alina stressed the importance of root analysis for understanding drought resistance, crop yield, greenhouse gas mitigation and more.\u00a0 She also showed how the Machine Learning and Sensing Lab (MLSL) is applying the concept of Multiple Instance Learning (MIL) to facilitate current hindrances to algorithmic training and testing for root analysis.<\/p>\n<p>This was a great opportunity to showcase some of the awesome work being conducted in the MLSL to a HUGE turnout of students, graduate students, and faculty! Additionally, she was able to demonstrate one practical way ML is being used to meet interdisciplinary research needs.<\/p>\n<p>Great job Dr Zare!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-5232\" src=\"https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/759\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190912_125947-scaled-1.jpg\" alt=\"a picture of dr alina zare presenting about plant root analysis with multiple instance learning. the picture also shows the audience and dr zare standing next to her slide\" width=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/759\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190912_125947-scaled-1.jpg 2560w, https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/759\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190912_125947-scaled-1-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/759\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190912_125947-scaled-1-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/759\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190912_125947-scaled-1-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/759\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190912_125947-scaled-1-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/759\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190912_125947-scaled-1-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-5234\" src=\"https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/759\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190912_130117-scaled-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/759\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190912_130117-scaled-1.jpg 2560w, https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/759\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190912_130117-scaled-1-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/759\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190912_130117-scaled-1-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/759\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190912_130117-scaled-1-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/759\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190912_130117-scaled-1-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/759\/2019\/09\/IMG_20190912_130117-scaled-1-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" \/><\/p>\n<h2>Abstract<\/h2>\n<p>In order to understand how to increase crop yields, breed drought tolerant plants, understand the relationship between root architecture and soil organic matter, and understand the role roots can play in greenhouse gas mitigation by enhancing the sequestration of carbon in soil, we need to be able to study plant root systems effectively. \u00a0However, we are lacking high-throughput, high-quality sensors, instruments and techniques for plant root analysis. \u00a0Techniques available for analyzing root systems in field conditions are generally very labor intensive, allow for the collection of only a limited amount of data and are often destructive to the plant. \u00a0Once root data and imagery have been collected using current root imaging technology, analysis is often further hampered by the challenges associated with generating accurate training data.<\/p>\n<p>Most supervised machine learning algorithms assume that each training data point is paired with an accurate training label. Obtaining accurate training label information is often time consuming and expensive, making it infeasible for large plant root image data sets. Furthermore, human annotators may be inconsistent when labeling a data set, providing inherently imprecise label information. Given this, often one has access only to inaccurately labeled training data. To overcome the lack of accurately labeled training, \u00a0an approach that can learn from uncertain training labels, such as Multiple Instance Learning (MIL) methods, is required. \u00a0\u00a0In this talk, I will discuss our team\u2019s approaches to characterizing and understanding plant roots using methods that focus on alleviating the labor intensive, expensive and time consuming aspects of algorithm training and testing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, Dr Alina Zare presented at the University of Florida Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department&#8217;s weekly seminar.\u00a0 In her talk, titled &#8220;Plant Root Analysis with Multiple Instance Learning&#8221;, Alina stressed the importance of root analysis for understanding drought resistance, crop yield, greenhouse gas mitigation and more.\u00a0 She also showed how the Machine Learning and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-templates\/single-sidebar-none.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"featured_post":"off","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5230"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16411,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5230\/revisions\/16411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.eng.ufl.edu\/machine-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}