Research Article

Advances in Mechanical Engineering

2017, Vol. 9(1) 112
The Author(s) 2017
Development of an automatic visual DOI: 10.1177/1687814016686265
journals.sagepub.com/home/ade
grading system for grafting seedlings

Subo Tian1, Zifan Wang1, Jifeng Yang1, Zichen Huang1, Ruili Wang1,
Liping Wang2 and Jianghui Dong3

Abstract
In this study, a visual grading system of vegetable grafting machine was developed. The study described key technology of
visual grading system of vegetable grafting machine. First, the contrasting experiment was conducted between acquired
images under blue background light and natural light conditions, with the blue background light chosen as lighting source.
The Visual C++ platform with open-source computer vision library (Open CV) was used for the image processing.
Subsequently, maximum frequency of total number of 0-valued pixels was predicted and used to extract the measure-
ments of scion and rootstock stem diameters. Finally, the developed integrated visual grading system was experimented
with 100 scions and rootstock seedlings. The results showed that success rate of grading reached up to 98%. This shows
that selection and grading of scion and rootstock could be fully automated with this developed visual grading system.
Hence, this technology would be greatly helpful for improving the grading accuracy and efficiency.

Keywords
Visual grading system, vegetable grafting machine, machine vision, grafting machine, image processing

Date received: 15 April 2016; accepted: 3 December 2016

Academic Editor: ZW Zhong

Introduction manual grafting.2 Furthermore, for most automatic

Grafting is a technique whereby branches or buds from
one plant are inserted into the appropriate parts of
another plant that has a strong affinity. A branch or
bud to be cultivated (i.e. scion) is encouraged to fuse or
graft onto a strong vital plant (i.e. rootstock) so that
the scion can grow, blossom, and bear fruit using nutri-
ent soil. Grafting technique can reduce soil-borne dis-
eases, enhance stress resistance, increase yield and fruit
quality, and has no effect on the plant quality.1
Currently, the grafting technology is rapidly developing
over the world in order to adapt to the needs of agricul-
tural production. At the same time, grafting robot tech-
nology has been developed. Some semi-automatic
grafting robots have been developed and commercia-
lized for cucumber, tomato, and watermelon in Japan,
South Korea, the Netherlands, and China. In these
countries, the working efficiency of semi-automatic
grafting robots is three times faster than the traditional
grafting machines, the grafting speed can reach up to
600 seedlings per hour. However, since the machines
still require auxiliary manual work, they can only
achieve a semi-automatic status. The scion and stock
1
College of Engineering, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang,
China
2
Sansom Institute for Health Research, School of Pharmacy and Medical
Sciences, University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, Australia
3
School of Natural and Built Environments, University of South Australia,
Adelaide, SA, Australia
Corresponding authors:
Ruili Wang, College of Engineering, Shenyang Agricultural University,
Shenyang 110866, Liaoning, China.
Email: wangruili@syau.edu.cn
Jianghui Dong, School of Natural and Built Environments, University of
South Australia, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia.
Email: jianghui.dong@mymail.unisa.edu.au

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2 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
plants must be classified so that the same size of seed-
lings can be placed properly in contact with each other
in the process of grafting. In this way, it can reduce the
organizations bare area and loss of tissue fluid, and
also survival rate of the grafted seedlings can be
guaranteed.
Machine vision is widely used in many fields, such as
industrial, animal husbandry, fisheries, agriculture, and
horticulture. In recent years, the applications of
machine vision have been deeply studied in various
fields, for instance, in grading of panel surfaces,3 high
temperature measurements of surface properties,4 auto-
matic grading system for fresh fruits, vegetables, areca
nuts, eggs, and others.513 Moreover, researchers in
recent have presented some algorithms for processing
images, which is the core of machine vision.1417
Ebrahimi et al. presented the image processing algo-
rithms in many research fields. The main algorithm
includes color space conversion, gray-scale transforma-
tion, image binarization, noise smoothing, and mor-
phological operations.1822 The machine vision system
of automatic grafting machine has still many shortcom-
ings, and many problems are unsolved like lower accu-
racy. Different algorithms of image processing
technology have been adopted in many fields, for exam-
ple, support vector machine (SVM).15,19,21 Although
these algorithms can distinguish the characteristics of
measured object in detail, the calculation process is too
complex, so it is not suitable for grading characteristics
extraction of grafting seedling. Furthermore, because
of the variety of each seedling, those algorithms are not
accurate in grading seedlings for some machine vision
system. Also a comparison of natural and artificial light
source has not been reported.1,23,24 For this reason, it is
important and necessary to develop the simple and
practical visual grading system for the muskmelon
grafting machine.
Currently, semi-automatic grafting machines have
been developed, while the fully automatic grafting
machines are still in development process.2325 On com-
parison, a fully automatic grafting machine is supposed
to have higher grafting requirement than semi-auto-
matic. For instance, the diameter of rootstocks and
scions should be the same. Therefore, the fundamental
requirement of the fully automatic machine is to use
the machine vision technology for grading seedling.
However, the human identification for grading of root-
stocks and scions is labor-intensive and has a low graft-
ing efficiency. This will greatly decrease the survival
rate. In previous studies, most designs are to use sun-
light, but sunlight has a strong instability. It will change
with time or weather change. In that way, the sharp-
ness, contrast, brightness, and other factors of the
taken out image will be greatly affected.
The aim of this study is to develop an automatic
visual grading system of vegetable grafting machine for
seedlings grafting. The main objectives of this study are
as follows: (1) to design an automatic visual grading
system which will include image acquisition module,
image processing module, and control module; (2) to
choose appropriate light sources in the image acquisi-
tion module; and (3) to conduct grading test of musk-
melon scions and rootstocks using the automatic visual
grading system.
Materials and methods
Experimental equipment
The experimental equipment includes a light source
device, PC computer, and DaVinci image processing
kit model (EL-DM6437; produced at Beijing DaSheng
Precision Instrument Co., Ltd). A blue light-emitting
diode (LED) panel backlighting was used as an illumi-
nation source with three strength grades, that is, high,
medium, and low. In this experiment, the blue LED
panel backlighting strength was adjusted to medium
grade from the light source controller and obtained
luminous flux of 1000 lumens.
The DaVinci kit consists of image capture card,
color digital camera, lens, and image processing soft-
ware. The camera has focal length with a range of
3.985.8 mm, a charge-coupled device (CCD) image
sensor chip with size ratio of 1/1.6 in (7.2 3 4.8 mm),
and lens with diameter of 46 mm. The PC is a Lenovo
desktop with good laboratory performance and has
Window XP operating system, an i5 3.20 GHZ CPU
processor, and 1 TB hard disk with 4 GB memory.
Experimental parameters considered, which are the
same with that of camera calibration, are as follows:
distance between camera lens and seedling (190 mm),
distance between blue background light source and
seedling (70 mm), image distance (13.82 mm), focal
length (12.88 mm), and image resolution acquisition
(720 3 480 pixels).
The automatic visual grading system for grafting
seedlings
The automatic visual grading system for this work con-
sists of three modules: the image acquisition module,
image processing module, and control module
(Figure 1(a)(c)).
The image acquisition module was used to obtain
digital images of the target seedling, and it is composed
of light source, EL-DM6437 image processing kits, and
image acquisition card (Figure 1(a)). First, the light
source produces blue LED background light and the
color camera captures image of seedling under the blue
LED background light conditions. The image acquisi-
tion card stored the image data and output them to the
processing module.
Tian et al. 3

Figure 1. Procedure of visual grading system, (b) image acquisition and processing module, and (c) control module.
4 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
Table 1. The size conversion chart for the grading levels.
Level A B
Diameter range of muskmelon 2.06 < d1 \2.61
scion seedling stem d1 (mm)
Pixel range of muskmelon scion 15 < n1 \19
seedling stems n1 (pixel)
Diameter range of pumpkin 3.30 < d2 \3.71
rootstocks seedling stem d2
(mm)
Pixel range of pumpkin 24 < n2 \27
rootstocks seedling stems n2
(pixel)
The image processing module, which includes both
hardware and software, was used to translate the image
data into grading information as shown in Figure 1(a)
and (b). The module has basically four key techniques:
image preprocessing, extracting image feature, analyz-
ing grading information, and outputting grading infor-
mation. After image processing, grading information
were obtained and sent to the control module.
Control module of the visual grading system was
used to drive motors and actuators to conduct the
seedling grading. It is made up of control system
and actuator. The control system composed of
microcontrollerprogrammable logic controller (PLC),
input/output (I/O) Relay Board, light-electric sensor,
limit switch, and electric motor (Figure 1(c)). The micro-
controllerPLC is the key component, and it received
grading information of the target seedling which was
changed to different grading levels. Then the electric
motors drive the mechanical system and transport the
graded seedling to the designed position.
Ashraf et al. tested and compared the effect of blue,
red, and white background light sources in grafting
seedling visual grading system. The results showed that
in order to obtain best contrast ratio, the blue back-
ground light source was found superior to other color
light sources. However, this work compared the blue
background light with natural light in order to achieve
the lowest cost. Selecting a light source should comply
with the rules of stability and should provide uniform
illumination and avoid reflections.1 There are no gen-
eral light sources for different targets, but to obtain an
optimal light source and lighting system, it is necessary
to perform numerous experiments according to the pro-
fessional experience of researchers. Accordingly, first,
the requirements for lighting system and size of the
light source can be determined based on the project tar-
get. Second, characteristics of the target, such as mate-
rial, shape, and color, should be determined based on
the recommended theoretical knowledge. Third, a light
source must be selected according to project require-
ments and the binding properties of different light
C D
2.61 < d1 < 3.16 3.16\d1 < 3.58 d1 \2.06 or d1 . 3.58
19 < n1 < 23 23\n1 < 26 n1 \15 or n1 . 26
3.71 < d2 < 4.13 4.13\d2 < 4.54 d2 \3.30 or d2 . 4.54
27 < n2 < 30 30\n2 < 33 n2 \24 or n2 . 33
Figure 2. Measurement results of 100 muskmelon scion
seedlings and 100 pumpkin rootstock seedlings: (a) muskmelon
seedlings and (b) pumpkin seedlings.
sources. Finally, the optimal light source type and light-
ing system will be obtained.
Technology of the vision grading system
Seedling grading. The experimental samples used are two
plug trays (5 3 10 points) of muskmelon scion seed-
lings and two plug trays (5 3 10 points) of pumpkin
seedlings. The vegetation period of muskmelon and
pumpkin is 15 and 7 days, respectively. Corresponding
stem diameters of muskmelon scion and pumpkin root-
stock seedlings were manually inspected, and seedling
level was determined.
Seedling stems of 100 muskmelon scions and 100
pumpkin rootstocks were measured to obtain the distri-
bution of the stem diameter sizes, as shown in Figure 2.
The range of muskmelon scion seedling stem diameter
is 2.103.60 mm, and that of pumpkin seedling root-
stock diameter is 3.254.60 mm.
Based on the stem diameter ranges, muskmelon
scion seedlings and pumpkin rootstocks seedlings were
divided into four grades. Table 1 shows the different
levels corresponding to the pixel range and grade of
stem diameter range for muskmelon and pumpkin.
From Table 1, the levels of A, B, C, and D
were determined by the grading criteria. Accordingly,
A level represents the grafted stem of a small diameter,
B level represents the grafted stem of a medium-sized
diameter, C level represents the grafted stem of bigger
Tian et al.
Figure 3. Flow chart of seedling grading procedure.
diameter, and the D level represents the grafted stem of
failed grading seedlings, with diameters that are either
too large or too small.
Procedure of seedling grading. The procedure of seedling
grading includes four key technologies. They are image
acquisition, image preprocessing, feature information
extraction, and seedling grading (Figure 3). First, con-
trol actuators grabbed the seedlings and put them to
the specified photo location. To ensure that every indi-
vidual operation was not affected by the immediate
past operations, the system was initialized before the
procedure of image acquisition. After image acquisi-
tion, the acquired image was transferred to the process-
ing unit. Also, to ensure that next steps become easier
and images are more obvious, the image was extracted.
Consequently, after preprocessing, information on
seedling stem diameter features is extracted. Finally,
classification operations are performed in accordance
with the standard of given grade seedlings. However,
the second individual plant seedling will not be pro-
cessed until the first one is completed. In this way, the
grading of whole batch of grafting seedlings is
completed.
1. Image acquisition.
First, the muskmelon and pumpkin seedling images
were obtained using the image acquisition unit. The
muskmelon scions and pumpkin rootstocks were
graded and sent to the designated location in visual
grading system by grafting machine. Image processing
suite of the image acquisition unit acquires images of
the seedlings, and the images were sent to the process-
ing unit via the image capture card.
5
2. Image preprocessing.
Image preprocessing mainly includes four parts, that is,
gray-scale transformation, binary image processing,
noise smoothing, and morphological closing operation.
The preprocessing analysis includes image processing
and obtaining information about the diameter of the
muskmelon scion seedlings.
 Gray-scale transformation. To facilitate image
processing and analysis, the color images are
usually converted into gray scale. In a gray-scale
image, the gray values of the pixels are repre-
sented by one byte. Gray value ranges from 0 to
255. The smaller value of the point is, the
blacker and darker the point is. The greater
value the point, the whiter and lighter the point.
Namely, 0 represents the darkest, 255 represents
the brightest, there is no color information after
the conversion containing only luminance
information.
 Binary processing. Binarization is to set the gray
value pixel image 0 or 255, namely, to show the
visual effect of only black and white. In this arti-
cle, there are obvious differences between the
image and the background image of grafted
seedlings, and the image needs binarization
processing.
 Image smoothing. In this article, the main image
consists of pulse noise (salt and pepper noise),
and the detail of the image is not too much, so
removing pulse noise by smoothing processing.
Using the median filter for image operations is
an effective mean to suppress noise, especially
for pulse noise with black and white dots super-
imposed on the image. The basic principle of
median filtering is first sorting all the pixels in a
neighborhood of one pixel in accordance with
the gray value and then selecting the median
arrangement to replace the gray values of sur-
rounding pixels with large difference in gray.
 Morphological closing operation. Morphological
closing operation includes first dilating the bin-
ary image, and then doing erosion operation for
the processed image. Closing operation can inte-
grate thin holes and narrow gaps in image and
eliminate tiny edges irrelevant to the target. It
makes the contour lines of the target in binary
image to become much smoother.
3. Feature information extraction.
To distinguish the pixels between the target and back-
ground, the pictures need to first pass the threshold of
transformation and then split the image according to
6 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
the threshold value. The pixel is considered to be part
of the background if the value is greater than or equal
to the predetermined threshold value; otherwise, it is
considered the target. It is easy to obtain better results
when the target and the background pixels have a sig-
nificant difference. After choosing a proper threshold
value, a muskmelon scion seedling can obtain the
threshold value.
The grafting positions of seedlings are on the main
stems, so the standard of grading is in accordance with
the diameter of the main stem. This study designed a
relatively simple method of calculation, which mainly
based on the number of pixels of the stem. It uses the
cumulative number of 0-valued pixels across the hori-
zontal direction in each row and then determines the
maximum frequency of the total number of 0-valued
pixels in all rows. When the maximum frequency is
greater than or equal to the minimum height of the stem
(100 pixels) on behalf of the pixel values, the highest fre-
quency occurs, and the total number of pixels indicates
the required stem diameter. Based on the former analy-
sis, the actual size of each pixel has been known, so the
diameter of the muskmelon seedlings stem could be
calculated.
Finally, the seedling stem diameter is calculated
according to the number of 0-valued pixels; this method
is shown as follows
Figure 4. Information extraction procedure for stem diameter.
lk 7:2 3 13:75
lpixel = = = 0:1375 mm=pixel 1
N 720
T = nlpixel = 0:1375 n 2
X
W 1
n= f (x, y), y = 0, 1, 2, . . . , H  1 and f (x, y) = 0
x=0
3
where lpixel is the actual size of the seedlings that every
pixel represents in the horizontal direction (mm), so the
actual size of one pixel is 0.1375 mm; l is the horizontal
size of the camera image sensor chip (mm); N is the
total number of horizontal pixels; T is the actual size of
the seedling stem diameter (mm); n is the total number
of pixels occupying somewhere in the seedling stem dia-
meter across the horizontal projection; f(x, y) is the
transformed gray value of a pixel at point (x, y); W is
the width of the picture; and H is the height of picture.
The key of grading is information extraction, and
the specific process is shown in Figure 4. The numbers
of all the 0-gray-value pixels in each row are added up
after preprocessing seedling images. The maximum fre-
quency of 0-gray-value pixels accumulation can accu-
rately show the size of diameter. The accumulation
curve of 0-gray-value pixel numbers in each row is
shown in Figure 4 for processed image of one seedling.
The line AB represents the 0-gray-value pixels
Tian et al.
accumulation in different columns of the stem in the
seedling image. The part above point A represents the
accumulation of leaf crown. The part below point B
represents the accumulation of the number of the pixels
of the seedling pot or the cultivate soil. Find the value
with a largest frequency of occurrence within section
AB, which represents the number of the pixels of the
seedlings diameter.
If section AB could be found approximating a
straight line with certain length (more than 100 pixels),
the classification is successful. Otherwise, the classifica-
tion failed. Then based on the standard of classifica-
tion, if the cumulative sum of the number of the pixels
whose gray value is zero is from 15 to 26, the grafted
seedling is qualified. And then calculate the cumulative
sum of the number of the pixels whose gray value is
zero with a largest frequency of occurrence. With this
cumulative sum, the diameter of the seedling can be
easily calculated. Finally, the diameter is used to judge
the level of a seedling.
Results
Light source selection
In this study, the natural light and blue light were used
as lighting source. The contrast effects are shown in
Figure 5.
Based on the processing in Figure 5, the gray value
curve of the cutting point of grafted muskmelon seed-
lings in the horizontal direction could be obtained, and
the results are shown in Figure 6. The gray value of
muskmelon seedlings under natural light conditions
Figure 5. The acquired images under blue background light
and the natural light conditions: (a) color image with acquisition
conditions of a light blue background, (b) color image collected
under natural light conditions, (c) color image to gray image
with a light blue background, and (d) color image to gray image
under natural light.
7
was approximately found to be 130, whereas the gray
value of the background was approximately 180, show-
ing a difference of nearly 50. The gray value of musk-
melon seedlings in blue background light was
concentrated at 40, but its background gray value was
up to 180, showing a large difference.
From this experiment, the contrast of the blue back-
ground light was obtained to be better than the contrast
of the natural light condition, so the scheme used in this
study incorporates the blue background light.
Seedling grading
The automatic grading system of grafted seedlings from
the muskmelon grafting machine is based on the
machine vision system. The grafted seedlings include
the muskmelon scion seedlings and pumpkin rootstock
seedlings. The grading method of the muskmelon
scions and pumpkin rootstocks is similar, so this
experiment only used muskmelon scion seedlings to
verify the grading.
Rows present eight different images of seedling.
Seedlings 16 are examples of successful grading, and
seedlings 7 and 8 are examples of unsuccessful grading.
Three columns display the processing steps of the same
image, that is origin color image, smoothing image,
and morphologic processing.
Figure 7 shows the series of processing steps of suc-
cessful and unsuccessful grading examples of muskme-
lon scion seedlings. Seedlings 16 are examples of
successful grading, and seedlings 7 and 8 are examples
of unsuccessful grading. The results of classification are
shown by the curves in Figure 8. From the curves of the
first seedling to the sixth seedling, section AB can be
found to approximate the straight lines which represent
the cumulative sums of the number of the pixels in the
different heights of the stems whose gray value is zero.
Then, the values between sections A and B with the
largest frequency of occurrence can be found, and the
Figure 6. The variation curve of the gray values along the
X-axis at the cutting point.
8 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
Figure 7. Examples of processing grading seedling.
diameters of the stems can be calculated. While it can-
not be found that section AB approximates the straight
line from the processed result curves of the seventh and
the eighth seedlings. So the number of the pixels which
represents the diameter cannot be confirmed, as well as
the diameter of the seedling cannot be calculated. As a
result, the classifications of the seventh and the eighth
seedlings are failed.
After automatic grading by visual system, the seed-
ling level was verified and the corresponding
muskmelon scion seedling stem diameter was manually
inspected to judge whether the grading system was cor-
rect. The automatic grading process of the 100 musk-
melon scion seedlings and 100 pumpkin seedlings used
the same operation. According to the grading criteria,
100 muskmelon scion and 100 pumpkin rootstock seed-
lings were counted, and the results of the automatic
grading are shown in Figure 9. From Table 2, the num-
ber of various grades of muskmelon scion seedlings
and pumpkin rootstock seedlings are basically the
Tian et al. 9

Figure 8. Curves of grading seedling.

Table 2. The comparison of the system grading results and manual grading.

No. Experimental results (mm) Manual measurement values (mm) Size error % Grading level Grading results

1 3.025 3 0.83 B Success

2 2.8875 2.85 1.32 B Success
3 2.8875 2.9 20.43 B Success
4 3.3 3.25 1.54 C Success
5 2.8875 2.95 22.12 B Success
6 3.1625 3.15 0.40 C(B) Success
7 2 2.9 2 B Failed
8 2 2.2 2 A Failed
10
Figure 9. The statistical diagram of the grading for 100
muskmelon seedlings and pumpkin seedlings.
same. Part of the muskmelon scion seedlings automatic
grading results was compared with the manual mea-
surements shown in Table 2.
The results of the contrast test between the measur-
ing diameter by hand and the classification with the
machine vision with 100 muskmelon scion seedlings
and pumpkin rootstock seedlings are shown in
Figure 9. In the result of the measuring diameter by
hand, the number of A level of the seedlings is 22, B
level is 60, C level is 15, and D level is 3. While the
result of the classification with the machine vision
shows that the number of the A level of the seedlings is
21, the B level is 59, the C level is 16, and the D level is
4. And the success rate of the classification is 97%
(because of the systematic error, the automatic grading
results of which are the C level, but the manual mea-
surement grades it as the B level, the graded result is
shown in No. 7 of Table 2). The reason leading to the
classification failure is the stem was blotted out by
the leaves, so the diameter cannot be determined. The
result of the other 100 seedlings is shown in Figure 9.
Therefore, the success rate of this system on the
muskmelon and pumpkin seedling grading success rate
achieved ;97% and 98%, respectively, and the mea-
surement results are basically consistent with the man-
ual measurement results, with a grading error of
between 22.3% and 2.3%, and an average grading
error of 20.57%, which meets the requirements of
design.
Discussion
In this study, some practical operations of the different
kinds of light sources were conducted and a mass of
images was acquired. The designation of light source
determined the significant degree of target objects in
the image. Therefore, the extraction of further informa-
tion becomes much easier in the process of image pro-
cessing. After using the best illumination, the acquired
images were clearer, the target characteristics are more
Advances in Mechanical Engineering
obvious, and the image was much easier to deal with.
In this study, the process of image classification and the
algorithm of seedling grading were described in detail.
The algorithm used is not only simple, but also fast
with high accuracy. It does not only shorten the run-
ning time but also greatly improve the success rate of
the grading; consequently, it laid a solid foundation for
fully automated grafting machine.
It has remained a great challenge to design a simple
and practical visual grading system. To solve this prob-
lem, one possible way is to establish hardware and soft-
ware system of grading system for grafting machine. In
recent years, the computer vision technique is becoming
one of the main methods to study grading in industrial,
animal husbandry, fisheries, agriculture, horticulture,
and other fields. In fact, the algorithms can distinguish
the characteristics of the measured object in detail.
However, the calculation process is too complex. Thus,
it is not suitable for the grading characteristics extrac-
tion of grafting seedling. Furthermore, because of the
variety of each seedling, some algorithm is very simple
and the results are not accurate in grading seedlings, so
it is difficult to achieve grafting seedling grading.
Therefore, the simple and practical visual grading sys-
tem for the muskmelon grafting machine was put
forward.
In this study, the key techniques were developed to
achieve grading information with the visual grading sys-
tem. First, after comparisons of background light and
natural light conditions, the blue background light
was chosen as the lighting source. Second, the algo-
rithm of the maximum frequency of the total number of
0-valued pixels was studied, and pixel measurements of
the scion and rootstock stem diameters were extracted.
Finally, the contrasting experiments of manual and
automatic grading were conducted. The results showed
that visual system meets the design requirements.
From experimental results of Figures 8 and 9, it can
be found that the maximum frequency of the total
number of 0-valued pixels each row is the stem dia-
meter of scion and rootstock. The theory of character-
istic curve in Figure 8 is using the feature of the stem
diameter of muskmelon scion for grading. After image
acquisition and binary image processing, the number of
all the 0-gray-value pixels in each row is added up.
Finding the maximum frequency of the 0-gray-value
pixels accumulation is a more accurate method to cal-
culate the size of stem diameter. From the curves of the
first seedling to the sixth seedling, it can be found that
section AB approximates the straight lines which repre-
sent the cumulative sums of the number of the pixels in
the different heights of the stems whose gray value is
zero. Then, the values between section AB with the
maximum frequency of occurrence can be found, and
the diameters of the stems can be calculated when each
pixel points have been known, which represent the
Tian et al.
actual image size. The part ahead point A represents
the cumulative sum of the number of pixels of the leaf
crown whose gray value is zero. The part below point
B represents the cumulative sum of the number of the
pixels of the seedling pot or the seedling cultivates soil
whose gray value is zero. If section AB could be found
approximating a straight line with certain length (more
than 100 pixels), the classification is successful.
Otherwise, the classification is failed. Based on the
standard of classification, if the cumulative sum of the
number of the pixels whose gray value is zero is
between 15 and 26, the grafted seedling is qualified.
And then the accumulation of the number of the pixels
can be calculated, the gray values of the pixels are zero
with the maximum frequency of occurrence. Based on
this accumulation value, the diameter of the seedling
can be easily calculated. Finally, the diameter value
was used to judge the level of the seedlings. It cannot
be found that section AB approximates the straight line
from the processed result curves of the seventh and the
eighth seedlings. So the number of the pixels which rep-
resent the diameter cannot be confirmed, as well as the
diameter of the seedling cannot be calculated. As a
result, the classifications of the seventh and the eighth
seedlings failed.
It is difficult to judge which pixel represents stem
parts, cotyledons parts, or root parts, so the uncer-
tainty remains as to the cause of the grading failure.
For example, from the result of fourth seedling, the
horizontal number of pixels of 0-valued points is stable
at 22 pixels, and a nearly straight line of the curve
(point A to point B) will be found (Figure 8). The seed-
ling vertical height ranges from 160 to 430 pixels.
Therefore, the vertical height represents the stem part
of the muskmelon scion seedlings. The 22 pixels of the
biggest frequency represent the number of pixel points
of the muskmelon seedling stem diameter, so the dia-
meter of this seedling stem is 3.025 mm, belonging to
the B level. The curve shows volatile changes when the
vertical height is less than 160 pixels or greater than
430 pixels. The upper part represents leaves and the
lower part is root of the muskmelon seedlings. The
volatile curve is due to seedling leaves and clods on
their roots. From seedlings 7 and 8 of the unsuccessful
examples in Figure 7, the total number of horizontal 0-
valued points substantially changed with the height of
muskmelon scion seedlings (Figure 8).
This algorithm is simple and convenient. Compared
with the traditional algorithm, this algorithm takes the
midpoint of this segment as diameter, and it is more
accurate. The results showed the grading success rate of
grafting on the muskmelon and pumpkin seedling
achieves ;98% using this present algorithm and system.
11
Conclusion
In this study, the comparative analysis of a vegetable
grafting machine and machine vision technology in
agricultural production was conducted. This study can
identify that the blue light illumination can be used to
capture the best images, based on machine vision and
image processing theory. Furthermore, the image pro-
cessing and corresponding algorithms were designed
and developed using vision system software with Open
CV image and video libraries on a Visual C++ pro-
gramming platform.
For 100 seedlings, an automatic grading test was
conducted based on a machine vision muskmelon scion
automatic seedling grading system. The results showed
that the automatic grading results are basically consis-
tent with manual measurement results, with a grading
success rate of ;97% and 98% for muskmelon and
pumpkin, respectively, a grading error of 22.3% to
2.3%, and an average grading error of 20.57%. The
test results met the requirements of the design system,
which laid an important foundation for further devel-
oping an automatic vegetable grafting machine.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial sup-
port for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article: This work is supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (31101076), Excellent Talents
Plans in Liaoning Province (LJQ2012061), and Tianzhu
Mountain Scholar in Shenyang Agricultural University
(2014).
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