Detection of the Nutritional Status of Phosphorus in Lettuce Using THZ Time-Domain Spectroscopy

Abstract

Phosphorus deficiency can lead to serious reductions in crop yield and quality. Rapid and accurate determination of phosphorus stress status in vegetables is essential for ensuring the appropriate application of water and fertiliser, improving the yield and quality of vegetables, avoiding the waste of resources and serious non-point pollution source caused by the abuse of chemical fertilisers, and promoting green production and sustainability of facility agriculture. Chemical analysis and spectral or visual imaging methods for detection of phosphorus nutritional status are not conducive in facility production owing to their low accuracy and damage to plants. Owing to its penetration and fingerprint characteristics, terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) can distinguish differences in internal components caused by excess phosphorus nutrients and changes in nucleic acids, nuclear proteins, phospholipids, and other macromolecules; thus, it could potentially be used to evaluate the nutritional status of crops. In this study, an innovative THz-TDS-based method was used to detect the nutritional status of phosphorus in lettuce. Lettuce was grown with different phosphorus levels using soilless cultivation and different nutrient solutions. Based on the standard formula of Yamasaki nutrient solution, the phosphorus content in the nutrient solutions was reduced or increased by 20%, 60%, 100%, and 150%, and lettuce samples exposed to each of these phosphorus concentrations were collected. Terahertz spectra are highly sensitive to water; thus, the lettuce samples were freeze-dried to minimise the effect of water and maintain their original quality and bioactivity. The spectra of lettuce were recorded using a TS7400 THz-TDS system; noise and interference were eliminated via normalisation based on Savitzky-Golay smoothing. The correction and validation sets were divided using sample set partitioning based on the joint x-y distance (SPXY). The stability competitive adaptive reweighted algorithm, iterative retention information variable algorithm, and interval combination optimisation algorithm were used to select the terahertz characteristic wavelength, and the successive projection algorithm was then used for secondary optimisation. Finally, a THz-TDS model of lettuce phosphorus was established using the partial least squares method with five principal component variables. The coefficient of determination of the model reached 0.7005, and the root-mean-square error of the predictions was 0.003273, indicating that this method has a high prediction accuracy.