2019 ASHS Annual Conference
Accuracy and Ease-of-Use Evaluated for Several Different Chlorophyll Meters
Accuracy and Ease-of-Use Evaluated for Several Different Chlorophyll Meters
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Cohiba 5-11 (Tropicana Las Vegas)
There are many reasons why researchers need to determine accurate leaf chlorophyll content. The standard procedure of removing leaves and extracting chlorophyll can easily be done, but this destructive sampling of leaf tissue is not always possible as some plants have very few leaves. Several different meters that have been introduced to the US market claim to determine leaf chlorophyll content indirectly, using either transmitted or reflected light. Ease-of-use, software, and purchase prices are considerably different between the various meters. In this study, we compared the effectiveness of these chlorophyll meters at measuring leaf chlorophyll content in Homalomena ‘Emerald Gem’. The plants were grown in a Florida greenhouse using a split-block design with two light levels and three fertilizer rates. There were four plants per block for each treatment and three blocks. The chlorophyll content of the newest mature leaf was measured monthly for six months using four chlorophyll meters: Apogee MC-100, atLEAF CHL PLUS, Opti-Sciences CCM – 300, and Konica Minolta SPAD-502 Plus. Additionally, the color of the leaves was measured using the NIX Pro handheld color sensor. Bimonthly, DMSO was used to extract chlorophyll from leaf discs and subsequent spectrophotometric analysis was completed at 649nm and 665nm for chlorophyll concentration comparison. The accuracy of the meters were compared to each other and to the chemical spectrophotometric analyses. Ease of use for each of the meters was also evaluated.