VSI-BARTZ MS-190, Manual UHD Minirhizotron Camera. The instrument allows wide range of basic or applied plant and soil scientists to capture UHD digital images (up to 2500 dpi!) of roots and the rhizosphere over one or multiple growing seasons. Durable and lightweight, and equipped with the reliable "Smucker" indexing handle for exact vertical positioning (and an novel indexing head for circular positioning), the manual & portable UHD minirhizotron camera system is following the tradition of Bartz camera systems. It is reliable and easy to transport to any field location or can be used in rhizotron facilities and for studies in mesocosms. It is equally suitable to image horizontally, vertically and angled minirhizotron tubes up to 500 cm in length and can be factory calibrated to a large range of different MR tube dimensions (see MR tubes section for standard MR-T diameters). The Windows OS-based ICAP 8 software quickly and reliable allows to set-up and follow-up imaging schedules and locations and handles the comprehensible ICAP naming of images.
Recently, the VSI-Bartz MR-190 minirhizotron system was added to a Minirhizotron comparison published by Rahman et al. (2020) published in MDPI Sensors. However, unfortunately, some of the given information, especially regarding the VSI system, is not correct. For example,
Further questions arise on the authors objectiveness, e.g. regarding prices, and the reliability of the provided information, e.g. the so called hyper-spectral imaging capacities of their SoilCam system which is using LED light sources on a CMOS sensor with removed IR filter.