Background: The spike of a cereal plant is the grain-bearing organ whose physical characteristics are proxy measures of grain yield. The ability to detect and characterise spikes from 2D images of cereal plants, such as wheat, therefore provides vital information on tiller number and yield potential.
Results: We have developed a novel spike detection method for wheat plants involving, firstly, an improved colour index method for plant segmentation and, secondly, a neural network-based method using Laws texture energy for spike detection. The spike detection step was further improved by removing noise using an area and height threshold. The evaluation results showed an accuracy of over 80% in identification of spikes. In the proposed method we also measure the area of individual spikes as well as all spikes of individual plants under different experimental conditions. The correlation between the final average grain yield and spike area is also discussed in this paper.
Conclusions: Our highly accurate yield trait phenotyping method for spike number counting and spike area estimation, is useful and reliable not only for grain yield estimation but also for detecting and quantifying subtle phenotypic variations arising from genetic or environmental differences.