2017 ASHS Annual Conference

The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Colour Chart is a widely used standard for assigning color descriptions in horticulture. The most current version (sixth revised edition) of the RHS Colour Chart was released in 2015 and includes a total of 920 color chips. This system relies on the manual assignment of a color description by comparing the plant part against the color chips. This method is highly subjective as people do not perceive color in the same way. The Nix™ Pro Color Sensor is a small, portable, hand-held device that measures color of any surface and provides numerical color data via an “app” on smartphones or tablets. The concept of assigning numerical values to colors using an electronic scanner is not new and it eliminates the inherent issue of human perception error. A unique feature of the Nix™ Pro is the ability to upload scanned color data and store it in the app’s “paint library”. The Nix™ Pro app can match scanned colors to the closest saved values. Each RHS color chip was scanned three times and the average value was used for assignment to a specific RHS color chip. This digitization of the RHS Colour Chart with the Nix™ Pro allows for much faster and more accurate assignment of color that is easily recognizable in the horticultural society and can be used with the historical and future color measurements. Using the Nix™ Pro, one can scan the horticultural sample (for instance a peach) in less than 5 seconds, match it precisely with the Nix™ Pro paint library, and assign the RHS color chip very accurately. In the Arkansas breeding program, the most common application will be in patent data collection for plant components for a range of fruit crops.