Research Article | Open Access

Volume 2026 |Article ID 100104 | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plaphe.2025.100104

From leaf to canopy: Inversion of lettuce pigment distribution using hyperspectral imaging technology combined with deep learning algorithms

Yue Zhao,^1,2,3 Jiangchuan Fan,^2,3 Xianju Lu,^2,3 Ying Zhang,^2,3 Weiliang Wen,^2,3 Guanmin Huang,^2,3 Yinglun Li ,^2,3 Xinyu Guo ,^2,3 Liping Chen ^1,2,3

¹College of Information and Electrical Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100083, China
²Beijing Research Center for Information Technology in Agriculture, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Beijing, 100097, China
³China National Engineering Research Center for Information Technology in Agriculture (NERCITA), Beijing, 100097, China

Abstract

Plant pigment content is a crucial indicator for assessing photosynthetic efficiency, nutritional status, and physiological health. Its spatial distribution is significantly influenced by variety, location, and environmental factors. However, existing methods for measuring pigment content are often destructive, inefficient, and costly, making them unsuitable for the demands of modern precision agriculture. This study proposes a cross-scale, non-destructive detection method for lettuce pigments by integrating hyperspectral imaging (HSI) technology with deep learning algorithms, addressing the limitations of existing techniques in high-throughput and spatial resolution analysis. In this study, we built a multidimensional dataset based on eight different types of lettuce and developed a deep learning model named LPCNet to predict the contents of chlorophyll a (Chl a), chlorophyll b (Chl b), carotenoids (Car), and total pigment content (TPC) in lettuce. The LPCNet model integrates convolutional neural networks (CNN), bidirectional long short-term memory networks (BiLSTM), and multi-head self-attention (MHSA) mechanisms, enabling automatic extraction of pigment-related key features and simplifying the complex preprocessing and feature selection procedures required in traditional machine learning. Compared to multivariate analysis methods in machine learning, LPCNet demonstrated superior predictive accuracy, with coefficients of determination () of 0.9449, 0.8613, 0.9121, and 0.8476 for Chl a, Chl b, Car, and TPC, respectively. Additionally, by combining the hyperspectral reflectance of lettuce canopies with the leaf-level inversion model, we visualized the spatial distribution of pigment content on the canopy of lettuce, achieving cross-scale analysis from leaf to canopy. This study provides an innovative approach for the rapid and accurate assessment of lettuce pigment content and offers an effective visualization tool for revealing the physiological processes and growth development of lettuce.