The Digital Radiographic Analysis of Vegetable Seeds: An Innovative Method

Abstract

A reliable seed system is the foundation of the country’s food independence. The main problem of the industry remains the quality of the produced seeds, which does not meet the requirements of modern agriculture. The current level of technology development and the growth of the seed market requires the use of effective instrumental methods for analyzing the quality of seeds, which differ from the standard ones, with more information and safety of the seeds being analyzed. The authors have developed and successfully applied the instrumental method of radiography of seeds of vegetable crops. The method allows visualizing the internal structure for conducting an economic and biological assessment of seed quality. In order to eliminate the economic costs of visual X-ray analysis, its automation was used. In the joint work of the Laboratory and Analytical center of the Federal Scientific Center for Scientific Research, the Department of Electronic Instruments and Devices of St. Petersburg State Electrotechnical University “LETI”, and the laboratory for long-term storage technology of the Research Institute for Storage Problems of the Federal Reserve (Rosrezerv), a modernized hardware-software complex PRDU-02M was successfully developed and tested. A computer program for automatic analysis of the quality of seeds of vegetable crops “SortSemKontrol-1.0” was also developed and tested. An algorithm for automatic computer analysis of the internal structure of seeds, which includes several stages, is compiled. The results of the automatic analysis of X-ray images of seeds are summarized as a protocol, which contains data on the quality of the analyzed seeds. The program is also able to read the linear dimensions of the seeds and determine the area of their projection, which allows judging the shape of the seeds, which, in turn, is a vivid indicator of quality.