A new software allows researchers to accurately measure the digital image of the blade in seconds. Leaf measurements are usually the key to the physiological ecology of plants, but traditional methods have been time-consuming and sometimes destroy plant samples. Researchers at the University of California, Davis Institute, have developed a simple leaf area, a free software, written in an open source programming language that allows users to accurately measure the leaf area of ​​digital images.
"All along, measuring the leaf surface area challenged without destroying the plants or spending long hours in the laboratory, so I decided to try to write software that automatically measures the image of the leaves and scales from the smartphone," said University of California, Davis One of the branch’s researchers and one of the developers of the easy-to-leaf area, Easlon said. "The measurement of leaf area is crucial for estimating crop yield, water consumption, nutrient uptake, plant competition, and growth," Easlon said.
Easlon and his team developed an easy-to-use leaf area for use with Arabidopsis plants, and also tested photos of the growing leafy wheat and tomatoes in the field of easy-to-leaf areas and common trees, Sequoia, Little Eucalyptus gooseberry, and Jeffrey Pine And the scan of the leaves of the Oak Valley in vitro. The next step for Easlon is to develop a mobile version so that leaf area measurements can be made without a computer. "Processing power, connectivity, built-in sensors, large storage capacity, and low price give smartphones great potential to replace many single-function devices for scientific data collection," Easlon said.
