A Method for Obtaining Field Wheat Freezing Injury Phenotype Based on RGB Camera and Software Control
Abstract Low temperature freezing stress has adverse effects on wheat seedling growth and final yield. The traditional method to evaluate the wheat injury caused by the freezing stress is by visual observations, which is time-consuming and laborious. Therefore, to effectively and efficiently quantify the wheat freezing injury in the field environments, a high-throughput phenotyping system was developed in this paper , namely, RGB FREEZING INJURY SYSTEM. The system is able to automatically collect, processing, and analyze the wheat images collected using a mobile phenotype cabin in the field conditions. A data management system was also developed to store and manage the original images and the calculated phenotypic data in the system. A group of 128 wheat varieties were planted with replicates under a freezing environment. Canopy images of the wheat were collected at the seedling stage and three image features were extracted for each wheat samples, including ExG, ExR and ExV. The results show that the developed methods can clearly distinguish wheat samples with different wheat freezing injury scores. The automatic phenotypic analysis method of freezing injury provides a solution for high-throughput phenotypic analysis of field wheat and can quantify the stress caused by freezing injury at the seedling stage. The method has a certain guiding significance for wheat breeding.