RGB-Based Estimation of Chlorophyll-Fluorescence-Derived Photochemical Status Across Garden Plant Species Under Progressive Drought

Abstract

Chlorophyll fluorescence provides sensitive information on plant photochemical responses, but its measurement requirements can limit high-throughput application. This study investigated whether RGB imagery could approximate chlorophyll-fluorescence-derived photochemical status across garden plant species during progressive soil drying. A Photochemical Status Index (PSI) was constructed by principal component analysis from five highly correlated JIP-test energy-flux variables (RC/CS, ABS/CS, TRo/CS, ET2o/CS, and RE1o/CS). The dataset comprised 50 aggregated species-by-soil-moisture-stage observations representing ten species and five sequential soil-moisture stages. Eleven RGB-derived variables were evaluated, and a partial least-squares regression model was assessed using nested leave-one-species-out validation, with all data-dependent procedures repeated within each outer training fold. PC1 explained 96.5% of the shared variation among the fluorescence-derived fluxes. The predictors g, GLI, ExG, ExGR, and CIVE were retained in all ten outer folds. The final model yielded a pooled out-of-fold R2 of 0.469, an RMSE of 1.585, and an MAE of 1.183. However, species-specific R2 ranged from −0.179 to 0.959, and a calibration slope of 0.509 indicated prediction-range compression. These findings provide proof-of-concept evidence of moderate RGB-based approximation of fluorescence-derived photochemical status, but inconsistent species transferability and the common soil-moisture/time gradient require external validation before practical deployment.

Plant phenotyping relevance

RGB画像から蛍光由来の植物光化学状態を推定する手法を構築し、種間交差検証で性能評価しており、植物フェノタイピング手法が中心である。

Code and data availability

The supplied blocks describe a greenhouse drought experiment with RGB imagery and chlorophyll-fluorescence measurements, but contain no data availability statement, public repository deposit, image dataset release, or author code/workflow URL. The analysis was performed in R (caret, pls packages), but no public code or

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