ACCURATE MEASUREMENT OF SIZE AND SHAPE OF CUCUMBER FRUITS WITH IMAGE-ANALYSIS

An accurate method was developed, using image analysis, for measuremen t of the length width and shape of cucumber fruits. Determination of t he local width along the mid-line of the fruit, enabled a condensed de scription of the fruit to be given. From this condensed description, s ize and shape features can be extracted, such as length, width and nec k-shape of cucumber fruits. Tests showed that the image analysis metho d was effective and efficient for determining shape features which are visually difficult to score. Comparison with the manually obtained re sults showed that the measurement errors for image analysis were much lower than the ones made by the observer, e.g. the standard deviation of cucumber length was 1.4 mm with image analysis and 3.5 mm by manual measurement. The proposed method has more general applicability and m ay be of interest for studying the shape of other elongated symmetrica l objects. (C) 1998 Silsoe Research Institute.