Measurement of Seedling Growth Rate by Machine Vision

Abstract

Seed vigor and germination tests have traditionally been used to determine deterioration of seed samples. Vigor tests describe the seed potential to emerge and produce a mature crop under certain field conditions and one measure is seedling growth rate. A machine vision system was developed to measure root growth rate over the entire germination period. The machine vision measurement technique was compared to the manual growth rate technique. The vision system provided similar growth rate measurements as compared to the manual growth rate technique. The average error between the system and manual measurement was 0.13 cm for the lettuce test and 0.07 cm for the sorghum test. This technique also provided an accurate representation of the growth rate as well as percent germination.