Effect on Mechanical Damage on Castor Germination and Damage Detection Method

Abstract

To study the types of mechanical damage for castor seeds and their effects on germination, the image processing method was applied to detect the damage affecting germination. Two typical varieties of castor were selected for test. The type of mechanical damage of castor seeds was taken as the factor, the germination rate and germination vigor index were selected as indicators for one-way analysis of variance. The effects of mechanical damage on the germination of castor seeds were analyzed. Different algorithms were applied to extract the features of cracks and seed shell missing, and the corresponding defect parameters were calculated. The results showed that the effects of mechanical damage on the germination rate, germination potential, germination index, and vigor index of castor seeds were significant. The endosperm damage seriously affected the activity of castor seeds and seriously hindered seed germination. According to the analysis of the shell, some castor seeds cracked or there was incomplete shell damage at the same time, the internal endosperm being also damaged. The actual crack length was compared with the length measured by the ultra-depth of field microscope, which found that the margin of error was about 25% and the better error was 10%. Through the morphological processing, it could completely extract the characteristics of castor seed image without seed shells. The error between the extracted feature area and the measured object area function of the super depth of field microscope is about 10%.