ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we work on the application of thermal imaging on seeds and seedlings (Dell’Aquila, 2009). The early stages of the development of the plant have only recently been analyzed with thermal imaging (Baranowski et al., 2003; Kranner et al., 2010; Belin et al., 2011). Thermal
8.1 Introduction ........................................................................................... 165 8.2 Experimental setup .............................................................................. 166 8.3 Thermal imaging applied to seed imbibition ................................... 168 8.4 Thermal imaging applied to seed elongation ................................... 169 8.5 Conclusion ..............................................................................................174 Acknowledgments ......................................................................................... 175 References ........................................................................................................ 175
imaging was first used to evaluate the germination capacity of legume seeds (Baranowski et al., 2003). The seed storage duration and the variations in germination speed were shown to induce significant thermal differences during the initial stage of the imbibition process. Biophysical and biochemical changes during imbibition and germination were also shown to be detectable with thermal imaging and useful to predict whether a quiescent seed will germinate or die upon water uptake (Kranner et al., 2010). Thermal imaging was shown useful to discriminate hypocotyl from radicle in Medicago truncatula during the elongation stage of the seedling (Belin et al., 2011). Because thermal imaging can be influenced by various parameters, it is necessary when working at a given observation scale to investigate the possible impact of the measuring environment on the information to be extracted from the scene. This was done, for instance, at the leaf scale in Kümmerlen et al. (1999). We propose to transpose such an approach when working with thermal imaging at the seed scale, and this chapter is organized as follows. Section 8.2 first describes the experimental setup used in this report for monitoring seed germination and elongation with thermography. In Sections 8.3 and 8.4, results are presented regarding the seed imbibition and seedling elongation stages with seeds of various species.
