Why should you use PlantCV?

PlantCV is an open-source ecosystem that is tailored for measuring plant traits (aka phenotyping). PlantCV was designed by plant science researchers to offer a range of community tools to simplify and enhance the analysis of plant traits.


Here’s why you should consider using PlantCV:

  • Using PlantCV is FREE to use! 

  • Save time - measuring plants by hand, or images individually through a graphical interface, is time consuming, inaccurate, and can be imprecise. Analyzing many images with the same set of parameters will save you and your team valuable time! 

  • PlantCV is open-source - that means all of the code is public, everyone can view and use it, and there are no intellectual property restrictions to using PlantCV for your work. 

  • Active support, updates, and new tools are constantly in development by the Core team at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center to ensure the tools will continue to work, even when other systems change. 

  • Built by plant science researchers, for plant science researchers - PlantCV was designed for plant phenotyping specifically, though the tools can be used for a variety of domains.

  • Customizable, flexible, and modular - PlantCV was specifically made to suit many applications. Instead of an interactive GUI (graphical user interface), PlantCV was made to be used through Python programming to maximize flexibility and applicability for the user. 

  • Extensive usage guide, tutorials, and detailed documentation make PlantCV easy to learn and use. 

PlantCV is not just for plants - the benefits of being free, open-source, flexible, and extensively documented has led many others to use PlantCV for their research, as well! From candle flames to human eyeballs, frog vocal cords to sidewalk cracks, check out the many publications that have used PlantCV for image analysis. 


Capture images.

Measure plants.

Make decisions.