HTPheno: An image analysis pipeline for high-throughput plant phenotyping

TLDR

High‑throughput analysis methods, especially automated greenhouse systems that non‑destructively screen plants over time using image acquisition, have become state‑of‑the‑art in life sciences. The paper introduces HTPheno, an image analysis pipeline for high‑throughput plant phenotyping. HTPheno, an ImageJ plugin, analyzes colour images from top and side views taken during screening, computing phenotypic parameters such as height, width, and projected shoot area using sophisticated image‑analysis algorithms. HTPheno was applied to two barley cultivars, demonstrating that the open‑source ImageJ plugin can automatically extract phenotypic traits and enable new biological insights such as fitness assessment.

Abstract

Abstract Background In the last few years high-throughput analysis methods have become state-of-the-art in the life sciences. One of the latest developments is automated greenhouse systems for high-throughput plant phenotyping. Such systems allow the non-destructive screening of plants over a period of time by means of image acquisition techniques. During such screening different images of each plant are recorded and must be analysed by applying sophisticated image analysis algorithms. Results This paper presents an image analysis pipeline (HTPheno) for high-throughput plant phenotyping. HTPheno is implemented as a plugin for ImageJ, an open source image processing software. It provides the possibility to analyse colour images of plants which are taken in two different views (top view and side view) during a screening. Within the analysis different phenotypical parameters for each plant such as height, width and projected shoot area of the plants are calculated for the duration of the screening. HTPheno is applied to analyse two barley cultivars. Conclusions HTPheno, an open source image analysis pipeline, supplies a flexible and adaptable ImageJ plugin which can be used for automated image analysis in high-throughput plant phenotyping and therefore to derive new biological insights, such as determination of fitness.