A spectral imaging predicting model for chilling stress of papaya (Carica papaya L.) plant

When Carica papaya L. seedlings are exposed to chilling stress, it can cause leaf necrosis, leaf drop, and even death of the plant.
Chilling stress is a relatively complicated abiotic stress, and using a single growth index to estimate it is challenging.
However, in recent years, spectral imaging analysis has been used to investigate plant reactions and tolerance under stress, increasing the efficiency of plant stress research.
In this study, we used papaya seedlings with different chilling stress levels to gather damage index, growth rate, and multispectral images as the data for establishing a rapid non-destructive model to access chilling damage in papaya seedlings.
Our results demonstrated that the predictive model using spectral data established in the research positively correlated with proline content, malondialdehyde content, and electrolyte leakage percentage, with R² values of 0.70, 0.71, and 0.70, respectively.
Additionally, the spectral data of detached leaves correlated with the plant regrowth index (R²=0.88), which is the relative growth rate of height after recovery from the stress to the one week before chilling stress.
Using spectral imaging analysis at the time of chilling stress can rapidly estimate the electrolyte leakage percentage and predict growth when recovering from stress.
In the future, this method can be beneficial to the physiological evaluation of papaya chilling stress and improve the research efficiency of related techniques.

IV Asian Horticultural Congress – AHC2023

Y.C. Yeh, P.A. Chen, Y.H. Lin

electrolyte leakage, leaf necrosis, multispectral images, physiological evaluation, proline content

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2024.1404.10