David E.

Steitz
Headquarters, Washington, DC April 22, 1998
(Phone: 202/358-1730)

Lanee Cooksey
Stennis Space Center, MS
(Phone: 228/688-3341)

RELEASE: 98-67

NEW DEVICE DETECTS PLANT STRESS EARLIER

Thanks to a new imaging tool developed at NASA's Stennis Space

Center in South Mississippi, farmers and foresters may now be
better able to detect unhealthy crops and trees before the damage
becomes visible to the naked eye -- information that may be used
to increase crop production.

Developed by NASA's Bruce Spiering, an electrical engineer at

Stennis, the Portable Multi-spectral Imaging System -- an
evolution of the basic color television camera -- gives the viewer
a picture of which plants are under stress.

"Until now, there was no fast and relatively easy way to

acquire multi-spectral, matched images," Spiering said. "This
system allows the images to be processed and immediately displayed
as they are acquired."

The system provides researchers with a new tool for gathering

this information. Multi-spectral imaging is the use of several
individual parts of the light spectrum -- specific wavelengths of
light -- to look at objects in different ways and to obtain many
different types of information about the objects.

The new imager has two benefits over earlier imaging systems.
First, each component of the system can be adjusted so that
separate images can be processed and combined automatically by
application-specific signal processors attached to the system.
This provides an instant multi-spectral view of the target while
reducing the need for processing the image in a lab. Traditional
collecting of multi-spectral information involved use of cameras
that recorded information about a specific part of the light
spectrum. Images in different wavelengths of light were then
combined and processed at a later time. This was a time and
labor-intensive process. Second, the use of off-the-shelf parts
makes the imager easily adaptable to any application.

One application of the imaging system being researched is the

detection of plant stress in crops and forests. The new system
currently is designed for use on the ground, but will soon be
adapted for use in light aircraft.

Plant stress is the adverse reaction of plants to

environmental conditions that are unfavorable to growth, such as
lack of sufficient nutrients, inadequate watering, disease or
insect infestation. The reaction with which most people are
familiar is a change in leaf color, but research has found that in
many cases, pre-visible signs of stress can be detected using the
proper instruments and techniques.

Plant stress can be monitored, in part, by observing

variations of the plant's reflectance in two specific wavebands of
light. Relative levels of chlorophyll, the pigment that enables
photosynthesis and gives plants their green color, can be
determined by measuring the plant's reflectance of light in those
parts of the spectrum. If the plant is under stress, its
chlorophyll production typically decreases, which results in more
light being reflected from the plant to the imager.

"When used in this application, the multi-spectral imaging

system along with the real-time processor immediately provides the
user with an indication of the amount of chlorophyll in the
plant's leaves," Spiering explains. "Previously, the process
required the recording of multiple images of the same scene. The
images were then matched and aligned with each other, processed
and then made available for display only on a computer."

Another possible application of the device would be to

identify ice on the Space Shuttle external tank prior to launch.
The system would record a near-infrared band image that could
identify the location of ice, frost or condensing water, and would
then record a second, thermal infrared image to determine the
temperature at those locations. The system would combine those
two separate images instantly to identify patches of ice on the
tank. This application is based on a technique that uses thermal
imaging to locate the colder areas on the tank where ice could
form. This would be an extension of the work already being done
at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, FL.

The imager also can be modified for use as an instrument to

detect hydrogen fires at such facilities as rocket test stands and
other industries that use hydrogen. Hydrogen burns so cleanly
that hydrogen fires are practically invisible to the human eye.
Several imaging systems already exist for this application, but
the Portable Multi-spectral Imaging System can be easily
reconfigured to test different cameras and light filters to fine-
tune the system for a variety of applications.

-end-