PhenoImage: An open-source graphical user interface for plant image analysis

High-throughput genotyping coupled with molecular breeding approaches have dramatically accelerated crop improvement programs. More recently, improved plant phenotyping methods have led to a shift from manual measurements to automated platforms with increased scalability and resolution. Considerable effort has also gone into developing large-scale downstream processing of the imaging datasets derived from high-throughput phenotyping (HTP) platforms. However, most available tools require some programming skills. We developed PhenoImage, an open-source graphical user interface (GUI) based cross-platform solution for HTP image processing intending to make image analysis accessible to users with either little or no programming skills. The open-source nature provides the possibility to extend its usability to meet user-specific requirements. The availability of multiple functions and filtering parameters provides flexibility to analyze images from a wide variety of plant species and platforms. PhenoImage can be run on a personal computer as well as on high-performance computing clusters. To test the efficacy of the application, we analyzed the LemnaTec Imaging system derived red, green, and blue (RGB) color intensity and plant pigmentation-based fluorescence shoot images from two plant species: sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] and wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) differing in their physical attributes. In the study, we discuss the development, implementation, and working of the PhenoImage.