An Instructional Guide for Leaf Color Analysis Using Digital Imaging Software

Download or read book An Instructional Guide for Leaf Color Analysis Using Digital Imaging Software written by and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Digital color analysis has become an increasingly popular and cost-effective method utilized by resource managers and scientists for evaluating foliar nutrition and health in response to environmental stresses. We developed and tested a new method of digital image analysis that uses Scion Image or NIH image public domain software to quantify leaf color. This publication provides instructions for using this software to measure the percentage green and red in leaves, colors of particular importance for the assessment of plant health. Comparisons of results from digital analyses of 326 scanned images of leaves and concurrent spectrophotometric measures of chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, and anthocyanins verify that image analysis provides a reliable quantitative measure of leaf color and the relative concentrations of underlying plant pigments.