Unsupervised analysis of NIRS spectra to assess complex plant traits: leaf senescence as a use case

BACKGROUND: As a rapid and non-destructive method, Near Infrared Spectroscopy is classically proposed to assess plant traits in many scientific fields, to observe enlarged genotype panels and to document the temporal kinetic of some biological processes. Most often, supervised models are used. The signal is calibrated thanks to reference measurements, and dedicated models are generated to predict biological traits. An alternative unsupervised approach considers the whole spectra information in order to point out various matrix changes. Although more generic, and faster to implement, as it does not require a reference data set, this latter approach is rarely used to document biological processes, and does requires more information of the process. METHODS: In our work, an unsupervised model was used to document the flag leaf senescence of durum wheat (Triticum turgidum durum). Leaf spectra changes were observed using Moving Window Principal Component Analysis (MWPCA). The dates related to earlier and later spectra changes were compared to two key points on the senescence time course: senescence onset (T0) and the end of the leaf span (T1) derived from a supervised strategy. RESULTS: For almost all leaves and whatever the signal pre-treatments and window size considered, the MWPCA found significant spectral changes. The latter was highly correlated with T1 (0.59 ≤ r ≤ 0.86) whereas the correlations between the first significant spectrum changes and T0 were lower (0.09 ≤ r ≤ 0.56). These different relationships are discussed below since they define the potential as well as the limitations of MWPCA to model biological processes. CONCLUSION: Overall, our study demonstrates that the information contained in the spectra can be used when applying an unsupervised method, here the MWPCA, to characterize a complex biological phenomenon such leaf senescence. It also means that using whole spectra may be relevant in agriculture and plant biology. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13007-022-00927-6.