Result description
n this work, a novel automated tool for fast quantification of whitefly eggs is presented to accelerate the determination of plant insect resistance and susceptibility. Leaf images with whitefly eggs were collected from a commercial microscope and a custom-built imaging system. A deep learning-based object detection model was trained using the collected images. The model was incorporated into an automated whitefly egg quantification algorithm, deployed in a web-based application called Eggsplorer. Upon evaluation on a testing dataset, the algorithm was able to achieve a counting accuracy as high as 0.94, r2 of 0.99, and a counting error of ± 3 eggs relative to the actual number of eggs counted by eye. The automatically collected counting results were used to determine the resistance and susceptibility of several plant accessions and were found to yield significantly comparable results as when using the manually collected counts for analysis.
Addressing target audiences and expressing needs
- Collaboration
Collaborators to further develop the features and functionalities of the Eggsplorer tool and software.
- Research and Technology Organisations
- Academia/ Universities
- Private Investors
R&D, Technology and Innovation aspects
The Eggsplorer tool and software was developed in the VIRTIGATION project to quantify whitefly eggs of plants. It forms the basis for new tools that are currently being further developed within the INSPIRE project – INnovations for Smart Plant Insect Resistance Evaluation and testing – which is funded by the Dutch Topsector programme.
By following the methodology described in the scientific publication: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13007-023-01027-9
