Petiole Pro Blog
Practical guides for plant measurement
Guides by topic: Leaf area measurement Greenness & plant nitrogen Counting & germination
Potato Leaf Area Measurement: Sizing a Compound Leaf with AI and Computer Vision
A long-read on measuring potato leaf area from smartphone photographs. Why the potato compound leaf breaks the measurement conventions that work on cotton or basil, what 53 leaves measured in Petiole R&D Lab experiment 006 reveal about real leaf-size variation (mean 43.84 cm², median 38.07 cm², range 13.6–89.2 cm², SD 19.04 cm²), how many leaves you actually need per treatment, and a field protocol that survives a potato canopy.
1 September 2026
Relative Assessment of Greenness with RGB Indices: How to Compare Leaf Colour Between Plants, Treatments and Dates
A long-read on relative greenness assessment from ordinary RGB photographs. Why absolute index values do not travel between cameras, sessions and indexes, what a 37-leaf Petiole Pro experiment shows about DGCI and AGRI agreement (Pearson r = 0.316), and four practical ways — control ratio, z-score, percentile rank and time delta — to turn leaf colour into a comparison you can defend.
29 August 2026
Greenness Measurement Using Digital Indexes for Plant Health Monitoring: A Practical Guide to DGCI, TGI and AGRI in Petiole Pro
A long-read guide to measuring plant greenness with digital colour indexes. Why assessing leaf greenness by eye fails, how DGCI, TGI and AGRI turn a leaf photo into a number, what a 272-leaf Petiole Pro analysis reveals about index agreement and measurement quality, and how to run greenness assessment on the Petiole Pro mobile app and in batch on Petiole Pro Desktop.
14 August 2026
Climate Impacts on Oak Germination and Early Development: What a 2,112-Acorn Warming Experiment Reveals
A common-garden warming experiment on sessile and pubescent oak shows that a seed's climate of origin — not warming alone — drives germination, survival, and early growth. Leaf area was measured with the Petiole Pro app to derive specific leaf area.
1 August 2026
Measuring Leaf Area in the Sundarbans: How Salinity Is Quietly Erasing Mangrove Functional Diversity
A trait-based study of 59 plots in the Sundarbans found that rising soil salinity shrinks mangrove functional diversity through trait convergence. Leaf area, stomatal density, chlorophyll and leaf dry matter content all fall; succulence and specific leaf area rise. Leaf area was measured with the Petiole mobile app.
16 July 2026
AI Assessment of Necrotic Leaf Area Damage: From Detecting Disease to Measuring It
How AI and computer vision quantify necrotic leaf area damage — RGB colour indices (NGRDI, AGRI), segmentation, calibration, and a repeatable workflow that turns a smartphone photo of a diseased leaf into a healthy-vs-necrotic percentage and real cm².
15 July 2026
Grapevine Canopy AI Analytics: The New Core of the Viticulture Production Cycle
How AI-powered grapevine canopy analysis — Leaf Area Index, canopy cover, gap fraction, plus batch processing of images and video — turns smartphone photos into decisions across the whole viticulture production cycle.
14 July 2026
Do I Need a Calibration Plate for Petiole Pro Leaf Area Measurement?
Yes, for leaf area measurement in cm² you need a Petiole Pro calibration plate. Without calibration, the app can detect the leaf area in pixels, but not convert it into real-world units.
9 June 2026
The Plant Whisperer in Your Pocket: Why the Future of AgTech is Edge AI
Why Edge AI, stomata analysis, and photocentric plant data workflows could transform the speed of agricultural research and crop trial feedback loops.
8 June 2026
Beyond the Sprout: 5 Surprising Lessons from Using AI for Germination Counting
Five practical lessons from applying Edge AI to germination counting in commercial nurseries, from diagnostic germination rates to human-in-the-loop verification and biological timing.
8 June 2026
How to Photograph Leaves for Accurate Leaf Area Measurement in the Field
Practical field tips for photographing red oak, red maple, and other tree leaves with Petiole Pro while leaves are still attached to the tree.
8 June 2026
Counting Round Objects with a Smartphone: Blueberries, Seeds, Nuts and Computer Vision
How a smartphone counts round objects — blueberries, soybean and chickpea seeds, peanuts, beans, grapes — using computer vision and light deep-learning models. Get count, average size, and standard deviation from one photo, why 87% accuracy is often enough, and why a calibration plate is the rule for real measurements.
14 May 2026
Applied AI for Soybean Breeders: Tools, Workflows and Use Cases from the 2026 Soybean Breeders' Workshop
Dr Maryna Kuzmenko's talk at the 2026 Soybean Breeders' Workshop, written up in full: the difference between AI and applied AI for soybean, which imaging tool fits each growth stage from germination to post-harvest QC, why drones cannot count soybean flowers, and where a smartphone beats expensive equipment.
1 March 2026
AI for Cotton Leaf Area Measurement: How Petiole Pro Matched the LI-COR 3100 in Independent Research
An independent, peer-reviewed study from three Brazilian institutions tested the Petiole Pro app against the LI-COR 3100 laboratory reference across four cotton cultivars. Petiole was the most accurate method for three of the four, with correlations up to r = 0.988. Here is what the research found, what the statistics mean, and how to measure cotton leaf area yourself.
1 March 2026
Productive and Effective Leaf Area Measurement of Basil: A Field Guide to Petiole Pro on Mobile and Desktop
A long-read guide to measuring basil (Ocimum basilicum) leaf area accurately and at scale. Why glossy, cupped, fast-growing basil leaves are hard to measure, how the Petiole Pro smartphone app captures leaf area non-destructively, and how Petiole Pro Desktop turns batch image processing into a repeatable phenotyping workflow — with a worked R&D dataset.
1 February 2026
Measuring Leaf Greenness with the Dark Green Colour Index (DGCI): A Field Guide to Petiole Pro and the Greenness Calibrating Plate
A complete guide to measuring leaf greenness and estimating plant nitrogen status with the Dark Green Colour Index (DGCI) in the Petiole Pro app, using the Greenness Calibrating Plate. Covers what DGCI is, how the calibration plate works, step-by-step measurement, best-practice guidelines, and the link between DGCI and SPAD.
1 January 2026