Eggsplorer: a rapid plant–insect resistance determination tool using an automated whitefly egg quantification algorithm

作者：Micha Gracianna Devi, Dan Jeric Arcega Rustia, Lize Braat, Kas Swinkels, Federico Fornaguera Espinosa, Bart M. van Marrewijk, J. Hemming, Lotte Caarls · 发表于：Plant Methods · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1186/s13007-023-01027-9 · 被引用次数：8 · 研究领域：Insect-Plant Interactions and Control、Phytoplasmas and Hemiptera pathogens、Insect Pheromone Research and Control

Abstract Background A well-known method for evaluating plant resistance to insects is by measuring insect reproduction or oviposition. Whiteflies are vectors of economically important viral diseases and are, therefore, widely studied. In a common experiment, whiteflies are placed on plants using clip-on-cages, where they can lay hundreds of eggs on susceptible plants in a few days. When quantifying whitefly eggs, most researchers perform manual eye measurements using a stereomicroscope. Compared to other insect eggs, whitefly eggs are many and very tiny, usually 0.2 mm in length and 0.08 mm in width; therefore, this process takes a lot of time and effort with and without prior expert knowledge. Plant insect resistance experiments require multiple replicates from different plant accessions; therefore, an automated and rapid method for quantifying insect eggs can save time and human resources. Results In 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 ...