OpenPheno: an open-access, user-friendly, and smartphone-based software platform for instant plant phenotyping.

Background: Plant phenotyping has become increasingly important for advancing plant science, agriculture, and biotechnology. Classic manual methods are labor-intensive and time-consuming, while existing computational tools often require advanced coding skills, high-performance hardware, or PC-based environments, making them inaccessible to non-experts, to resource-constrained users, and to field technicians.

Results: To respond to these challenges, we introduce OpenPheno, an open-access, user-friendly, and smartphone-based platform encapsulated within a WeChat Mini-Program for instant plant phenotyping. The platform is designed for ease of use, enabling users to phenotype plant traits quickly and efficiently with only a smartphone at hand. We currently instantiate the use of the platform with tools such as SeedPheno, WheatHeadPheno, LeafAnglePheno, SpikeletPheno, CanopyPheno, TomatoPheno, and CornPheno; each offering specific functionalities such as seed size and count analysis, wheat head detection, leaf angle measurement, spikelet counting, canopy structure analysis, and tomato fruit measurement. In particular, OpenPheno allows developers to contribute new algorithmic tools, further expanding its capabilities to continuously facilitate the plant phenotyping community.

Conclusions: By leveraging cloud computing and a widely accessible interface, OpenPheno democratizes plant phenotyping, making advanced tools available to a broader audience, including plant scientists, breeders, and even amateurs. It can function as a role in AI-driven breeding by providing the necessary data for genotype-phenotype analysis, thereby accelerating breeding programs. Its integration with smartphones also positions OpenPheno as a powerful tool in the growing field of mobile-based agricultural technologies, paving the way for more efficient, scalable, and accessible agricultural research and breeding.