leaf area

Leaf area is useful basis for the expression of the photosynthetic activity, specific leaf area, content of chlorophylls and carotenoids, etc. However, commercial devices are quite expensive. Therefore, we propose a low cost arrangement for the determination of projected leaf area. The device consists of common scanner (e.g. Bear Paw 1200F) and simple software (CERNOTA - Slovák, Kalina, 2002). The leaves are separately placed on the glass of scanner and scanned. The picture (format BMP or JPEG) can be directly loaded by CERNOTA programme which counts number of dark pixels and converts this number to projected area in mm2 according to linear calibration (area range from 0.5 to 25 cm2, R2=0.99996). The relative error of the estimation is less than +- 3.62% in whole measured range. The resolution of measurement is less than 0.065 mm2 for the scanner resolution 100 dots per inch. Thus, both parameters are comparable to the quality of leaf area estimation by commercially available leaf area meters.

Leaf area is useful basis for the expression of the photosynthetic activity, specific leaf area, content of chlorophylls and carotenoids, etc. However, commercial devices are quite expensive. Therefore, we propose a low cost arrangement for the determination of projected leaf area. The device consists of common scanner (e.g. Bear Paw 1200F) and simple software (CERNOTA - Slovák, Kalina, 2002). The leaves are separately placed on the glass of scanner and scanned. The picture (format BMP or JPEG) can be directly loaded by CERNOTA programme which counts number of dark pixels and converts this number to projected area in mm2 according to linear calibration (area range from 0.5 to 25 cm2, R2=0.99996). The relative error of the estimation is less than +- 3.62% in whole measured range. The resolution of measurement is less than 0.065 mm2 for the scanner resolution 100 dots per inch. Thus, both parameters are comparable to the quality of leaf area estimation by commercially available leaf area meters.