Design And Development Of Portable Leaf Area Meter

Leaf area is a key parameter for the plant growth and development, physiology and ecology research, also is referring factor of the crop cultivation and breeding genetics. So measuring leaf area rapidly and correctly is necessary and important, is in favor of saving the cost and improving the efficiency of research, too. The leaf area meter is one of many methods of measuring leaf area, and is accuracy, rapid and prone to operate, so used widely on the world. But in China, the research about leaf area meter is a little and can not be apply practically.In this research, the portable leaf area meter is designed by combining microcontroller with light source LED and light sensor. The measurement using this instrument is precise, rapid and simple, synchronously, can display and storage the result from it. In the end, transfer the result to the computer for processing the datum.The result from the test of this apparatus indicates: this instrument is steady and reduplicative, the repeat error is 0.62%, and coefficient variance is 0.46%. Furthermore, it is accurate, the relative error of the green or non- hackle leaf is 1%~2%, and the relative error of the micro-yellow or hackle leaf is 2%~3%. So, the performance of this instrument is able to meet the need of actual application well.Comparing the congener, this apparatus has many characters, such as cheapness, low power consuming, accuracy, high repetition and anti-shake.In this paper, the hardware, software and anti-interrupt method of the instrument are introduced in detail, and the performance and integer error are discussed, too. At last, the insufficiencies of the apparatus are pointed out, and suggests on mending and improving it are also brought forward.