Handheld Multifunctional Fluorescence Imager for Non-invasive Plant Phenotyping

Abstract

Fluorescence imaging has shown great potential in non-invasive plant monitoring and analysis. However, current systems have several limitations, such as bulky size, high cost, contact measurement, and lack of multifunctionality, which may hinder its applications in a wide range of settings including indoor vertical farming. Herein, we developed a compact handheld fluorescence imager enabling multipurpose plant phenotyping, such as continuous photosynthetic activity monitoring and non-destructive anthocyanin quantification. The compact imager comprises of pulse-amplitude-modulated multi-color light emitting diodes (LEDs), optimized light illumination and collection, dedicated driver circuit board, miniaturized charge-coupled device camera, and associated image analytics. Experiments conducted in drought stressed lettuce proved that the novel imager could quantitatively evaluate the plant stress by the non-invasive measurement of photosynthetic activity efficiency. Moreover, a non-invasive and fast quantification of anthocyanins in green and red Batavia lettuce leaves had excellent correlation (>84%) with conventional destructive biochemical analysis. Preliminary experimental results emphasize the high throughput monitoring capability and multifunctionality of our novel handheld fluorescence imager, indicating its tremendous potential in modern agriculture.

Plant phenotyping relevance

携帯型蛍光イメージャを開発し、光合成活性やアントシアニンを非破壊・定量的に推定する植物フェノタイピング手法を中心に扱っている。

Code and data availability

The article describes a handheld fluorescence imager and its plant phenotyping experiments (drought-stressed lettuce PSA imaging, anthocyanin quantification), but no public phenotype dataset, image collection, analysis code repository, or trained model is deposited. The data availability statement only directs further

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