ACCELERATED METHOD OF DETERMINATION OF LEAF AREA OF CROPS BY COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY
The short comparative analysis of the applied techniques of determination of the area of leaves of the studied plants is provided, i.e. the method of drawing contours of leaves on graph paper, the method of carvings, the method of measurements, the planimetric method. Their merits and demerits are revealed: the method of drawing contours of leaves on graph paper is exact, but is very endur-ing, the method of carvings is convenient and ra-ther fast, however is inapplicable to some cultures and has errors, a method of measurements is available, fast and simple, with big errors of mea-surements, a planimetric method is exact and con-venient method demanding existence of the difficult expensive equipment. The technique of the accele-rated determination of the area of a sheet surface of crops with use of the scanner is developed. The method essence: the dense transparent film is put on the scanner; on a film leaves of the studied plant which surface has to be previously dried are dis-played. Leaves densely nestle on exhibiting glass a scanner cover. Sheet plates are scanned. The re-ceived result remains in the form of a bitmap (bich-romatic, sometimes called black-and-white). The received bitmap is loaded into the APFill Ink&Toner Coverage Meter program, calculation of the area of filling of a leaf with ink is started and after a short period the researcher receives the indicator of filling of a surface of a leaf with ink expressed as a per-centage. Further by calculations for the offered technique we receive the area of the scanned leaves. Using the developed technique the re-searcher has an opportunity to estimate the area of a covering of the page of the A4 format leaves of the studied culture, and further to extrapolate the obtained data for definition of a sheet surface of plants, photosynthesizing on a certain square of crops. The offered method allows to take quickly and precisely measurements, thus does not de-mand existence of the expensive scientific equip-ment or difficult software that makes it available for any researcher whom the problem of carrying out measurement of the area of a sheet surface faces.