DETERMINATION OF LEAF AREA AND PLANT COVER BY USING DIGITAL IMAGE PROCESSING

The development of different crop models, and crop simulation models in particular, pointed out the importance of quantifying the exact value of the leaf area. To measure the leaf size of plants of pinnatifid form, automatic, portable leaf area meters are necessary. In most places these instruments are not available to measure the assimilatory surface size of crops with special leaf shapes. Any cheap and effective method, that could replace the application of expensive portable area meters could be useful in practical every-day research. A CCD camera was applied in our study to take photos in every leaf level of plant height. Another problem is the determination of the shadowing surface (covering) of the whole plant one at a time. By analyzing the images the leaf area or the covering of a whole plant was evaluated