Size measurement and filled/unfilled detection of rice grains using backlight image processing.

Abstract

Measurements of rice physical traits, such as length, width, and percentage of filled/unfilled grains, are essential steps of rice breeding. A new approach for measuring the physical traits of rice grains for breeding purposes was presented in this study, utilizing image processing techniques. Backlight photography was used to capture a grayscale image of a group of rice grains, which was then analyzed using a clustering algorithm to differentiate between filled and unfilled grains based on their grayscale values. The impact of backlight intensity on the accuracy of the method was also investigated. The results show that the proposed method has excellent accuracy and high efficiency. The mean absolute percentage error of the method was 0.24% and 1.36% in calculating the total number of grain particles and distinguishing the number of filled grains, respectively. The grain size was also measured with a little margin of error. The mean absolute percentage error of grain length measurement was 1.11%, while the measurement error of grain width was 4.03%. The method was found to be highly accurate, non-destructive, and cost-effective when compared to conventional methods, making it a promising approach for characterizing physical traits for crop breeding.

Plant phenotyping relevance

イネ籾の長さ・幅・充実度を画像処理で測定する方法を開発し、精度とバックライト条件の影響を検証しており、植物表現型取得が中心です。

Code and data availability

The paper's phenotype reference measurements (grain counts, filled/unfilled counts, and grain sizes for the validation experiments) are reported in Appendices A–C, which are included in the article's supplementary material, publicly available at the Frontiers supplementary-material URL. No author analysis code or image