ISHS Acta Horticulturae 260: International Symposium on Growth and Yield Control in Vegetable Production
NONDESTRUCTIVE PLANT MASS DETERMINATION BY COMPUTER IMAGE ANALYSIS AND MICROWAVES |
| Authors: | D. Ernst, W. Kühn |
| Abstract:
In horticulture, forestry and agriculture we often face the task to determine fresh and dry matter of plants. In the classical approach this is done by harvesting and weighing resp. drying and weighing. These methods, however, do not only require a high labour-investment, they also sacrifice the plants. We here want to report about nondestructive and computer-adaptable methods developed in Hannover. The first is the computer-analysis of infrared (IR) images. It follows a very simple principle. A high cucumber will give a high picture whereas a tiny one yields a tiny picture. A measurement of the pixels (points) of the image gives information about the plant mass (Matsui, Eguchi 1976, 1977, Evers et al., 1987). Further the absorption of different radiation can be exploited to determine plant mass.
First of all microwave absorption should be mentioned.
It primarily gives information about the water content of the plant.
Further the total mass can be determined with | |
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-or 
ray-absorption.
Both measurements together open a way to determine dry matter as the difference.
However, since a difference between two nearly equal figures must be calculated, each influenced by remarkable experimental errors, the method could not yet yield meaningful results (Schätzler 1975, Kühn et al., 1987, Wiebe et al., 1974, Glubrecht et al., 1959, Schätzler 1976, Trost 1960, Unger 1959, Schulze, Kühn (1984).
