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Home → Publications → Evaluating Seedling Quality: Principles, Procedures, and Predictive Abilities of Major Tests → 10: Infrared thermography for assessing seedling condition- Rationale and preliminary observations

10: Infrared thermography for assessing seedling condition- Rationale and preliminary observations

Forest managers need quick. nondestructive tests to estimate degree of dormancy and other aspects of the physiological condition of tree seedlings. We are investigating the potential of state-of-the-art thermography for this purpose. The study is based on the possibility that plant temperature is related to important physiological attributes of seedlings in diagnostically useful ways: (1) Leaf temperature is affected by stomatal conductance, which may be influenced by dormancy status; and (2) temperature of buds, root tips, and seeds may be measurably affected by rate of metabolic activity. Preliminary observations for several coniferous species and seed sources suggest that seedling temperature varies significantly in relation to length of time since beginning of emergence from the last stage of dormancy. But efforts to date to use thermography for measuring differences in metabolic activity of conifer buds, roots, and seeds have been unsuccessful.


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Author(s): C. Phillip Weatherspoon, Robert James Laacke

Publication: Evaluating Seedling Quality: Principles, Procedures, and Predictive Abilities of Major Tests