Description of morphological characteristics of wheat spike as a digital certificate in the SpikeDroidDB database

It has been repeatedly shown that spike productivity is the main component of wheat yield. The main spike parameters related to productivity are size, the number of grains and spikelets per spike, and the presence or absence of awns. In modern genetic research, morphometric analysis of hundreds and thousands of spikes is required to determine the loci that control spike productivity traits. On the other hand, thousands of accessions in modern collections of wheat genetic resources need detailed description. These considerations motivate the development of digital technologies for describing spike traits in wheat, which can be achieved through image analysis methods. These methods allow for automated acquisition of trait values that can serve as the basis for digital plant collections. Here we propose an extended set of spike characteristics obtained both manually and through digital image analysis and present plant characterization. These data form the basis of the updated version of the SpikeDroidDB database (http://spikedroid.biores.cytogen.ru/). The digital description of the spike consists of two blocks. The block of uploaded data includes a description of the plant and contains five tables: collection; variety sample (year of cultivation (vegetation), sowing identifier, taxonomic information, etc.), planting site, and characteristics of the spike determined manually (length, width of frontal and lateral views, type and color of the spike, etc.) The block of extracted features includes spike characteristics obtained by digital phenotyping and contains six tables: characteristics of the spike outline in the image; characteristics of the quadrangle model, values of the color components of the spike, dominant colors of the spike, and texture characteristics of the spike in the image. The most illustrative and significant features of the spike have been identified, allowing for the formation of the spike digital certificate, which includes size, shape, and color features derived from the digital images. The features forming the digital certificate have been compared between two wheat species, T. aethiopicum and T. carthlicum. It is shown that the features of the digital certificate allow for a clear representation of the spike model and the identification of distinct parameters: colors of the spike and awns and roundness of the frontal view of the spike. The database interface has been supplemented with the ability to upload data on plant and spike characteristics, as well as their images, in the batch mode.

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