Abstract:

【Objective】To seek for a simple，rapid and low-cost method of obtaining the phenotypic parameters of plant leaves.【Methods】Taking Solanum muricatum as an example，digital images of detached leaves were taken by scanner，and Image J software was used to measure phenotypic parameters. The results were compared to those obtained using the Digimizer software to verify the reliability of the method. Additionally the impact of image quality（image format and resolution）on software measurement results was also analyzed.【Results】In measuring the leaf area，leaf circumference，leaf length，and leaf width of Solanum muricatum，the standard root mean square errors（NRMSE） of the two software were 0.471%，1.103%，0.391% and 1.662%，respectively. The correlation coefficients were higher than 0.97. The measuring outcomes of the Image J software were somewhat impacted by the image quality. The impact on grayscale format or low resolution images was smaller than that on color format or high resolution images，but the superposition of the two factors will aggravate the impact.【Conclusion】The improved method by using scanner combined with Image J software to measure phenotypic parameters of plant leaves has the advantages of low cost，semi-automatic，quick and accurate as well as batch processing，which provided references for the measurement of phenotypic parameters of plant leaves.

Key words: Solanum muricatum, Leaf phenotypic parameters, Image J software, Digimizer software, Scanner