FruitPhenoBox - a device for rapid and automated fruit phenotyping of small sample sizes.

Abstract

Background Fruit appearance of apple (Malus domestica Borkh.) is accession-specific and one of the main criteria for consumer choice. Consequently, fruit appearance is an important selection criterion in the breeding of new cultivars. It is also used for the description of older varieties or landraces. In commercial apple production, sorting devices are used to classify large numbers of fruit from a few cultivars. In contrast, the description of fruit from germplasm collections or breeding programs is based on only a few fruit from many accessions and is mostly performed visually by pomology experts. Such visual ratings are laborious, often difficult to compare and remain subjective. Results Here we report on a morphometric device, the FruitPhenoBox, for automated fruit weighing and appearance description using computer-based analysis of five images per fruit. Recording of approximately 100 fruit from each of 15 apple cultivars using the FruitPhenoBox was rapid, with an average handling and recording time of less than eleven seconds per fruit. Comparison of fruit images from the 15 apple cultivars identified significant differences in shape index, fruit width, height and weight. Fruit shape was characteristic for each cultivar, while fruit color showed larger variation within sample sets. Assessing a subset of 20 randomly selected fruit per cultivar, fruit height, width and weight were described with a relative margin of error of 2.6%, 2.2%, and 6.2%, respectively, calculated from the mean value of all available fruit. Conclusions The FruitPhenoBox allows for the rapid and consistent description of fruit appearance from individual apple accessions. By relating the relative margin of error for fruit width, height and weight description with different sample sizes, it was possible to determine an appropriate fruit sample size to efficiently and accurately describe the recorded traits. Therefore, the FruitPhenoBox is a useful tool for breeding and the description of apple germplasm collections.

Plant phenotyping relevance

リンゴ果実の画像取得・コンピュータ解析・重量測定を統合した装置を開発し、測定速度、再現性、誤差、適切なサンプルサイズを評価しており、果実形態形質の取得法が研究の中心である。

Code and data availability

The paper's Data availability statement explicitly deposits raw fruit images, extracted datasets, and R scripts in the ETH Research Collection (doi:10.3929/ethz-b-000590509), and the Matlab/R image-analysis scripts (apple fruit feature extractor, affe) on SourceForge. Both are paper-specific, public, and actionable.