Development and validation of a low-cost imaging system for seedling germination kinetics through time-cumulative analysis

Abstract

The ready-to-eat lettuce industry is rapidly expanding, increasing the need for reliable, scalable methods to assess seed germination and early growth under realistic soil conditions. This study presents an automated imaging-based approach for quantifying germination dynamics and seedling vigor using a low-cost multi-camera system under greenhouse conditions. Lettuce seeds were grown in soil either inoculated or non-inoculated with the soil-borne pathogen Rhizoctonia solani. Top-view images were acquired using commercial surveillance cameras and processed through a calibrated pipeline including geometric correction, color normalization, vegetation segmentation, clustering, and temporal tracking of emergence events. Seedling vigor was quantified through projected leaf area estimation. The proposed method enables accurate estimation of germination kinetics and growth dynamics under field-like conditions. Automated counts were validated against manual measurements at both intermediate and final time points, achieving high agreement in both cases. At the final assessment, the method reached R² = 0.98 and RMSE = 1.12, while at the midterm evaluation it achieved improved performance with R² = 0.998 and RMSE = 0.5, reflecting the lower complexity of plant structure at earlier growth stages. Results showed that pathogen inoculation significantly reduced both germination rate and seedling vigor, with up to 70% reduction in biomass accumulation. The proposed framework provides a robust, low-cost solution for high-throughput phenotyping of early plant development in soil-based systems, supporting scalable agricultural experimentation.

Plant phenotyping relevance

低コスト多カメラ画像システムと画像解析パイプラインを開発・検証し、発芽動態と幼植物活力を定量化しているため、植物フェノタイピング手法が中心です。

Code and data availability

The paper describes a MATLAB image-analysis pipeline and germination/vigor measurements, but contains no data availability statement, no public dataset or image deposit, and no author code URL. All DOIs in the text are cited references, not paper-specific assets.

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