Vol. 7, Issue 8 (2018)

Author(s):
Upasana Datta and Kaushik Chakroboarty

Abstract:
Leaf is a key functional organ of photosynthesis and transpiration. Leaf area plays an important role in plant growth analysis and photosynthesis and susceptibility of different plants to insect pest attack. Leaf area index is one of the most important parameters in ecological and environmental studies. Leaf area index (LAI) is widely used to describe the photosynthetic and transpiration surface of plant leaves and also a helpful parameter in evaluating, damage caused by leaf diseases and insect pests, estimation of the diseases severity for application of pesticide and fertilizers. Thus fast and accurate estimation of leaf area is significant. Considering the cost of tools, applicability, accuracy, efficiency, and the convenience for outdoor measurement, the image processing technique can be a considerable method. In this paper we have proposed a solution to calculate single Leaf Area and Leaf Area Index based on the counting of the leaf pixels using Information Technology Application Adobe Photoshop CS software for different leaves. Results show that soft wares give above 98% accurate results and are fast and cheap compared to manual grid count method. The single leaf area can thus be computed easily based on this pixel counting method. Analysis and experimental results indicate that the proposed method is an efficient and precise method for single leaf area measurement