AN ASSESSMENT OF A COMPUTER BASED METHOD FOR THE MEASUREMENT OF THE AREA OF SIMPLE LEAVES

Abstract

The tedious and time consuming classical method of leaf area measurement involving counting of squares over shadowed by the outline of a leaf on graph sheets, was simplified through an Excel program that would accept measurements of the length and breadth of the leaf and convert them into Area of the appropriate component shapes such as triangles, rectangles, semi circles etc best fitting for the leaf and then sum them up to derive the total actual area of the leaf. Results from the computerized leaf area method when compared with that of the manual leaf area method revealed a nonsignificant difference (t = 0.724; 2.571.P>0.5 at 5 df) The computerized method was found to be more economical, saving nearly 61% of the time needed for the manual leaf area calculation. In both area measurement (CV= 87:81) and time taken (CV 40:38), the computerized procedure reflected a marginal advantage in the ability to distinguish peculiarities in the population sampled