ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.

Sec. Sustainable and Intelligent Phytoprotection

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1645490

This article is part of the Research TopicInnovative Applications of Hyperspectral Imaging Technology in Horticultural PlantsView all articles

Detection of microplastics stress on rice seedling by visible/near-infrared hyperspectral imaging and synchrotron radiation Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy

Provisionally accepted
Chaojie  WeiChaojie Wei1Hongxin  XieHongxin Xie2Wei  WangWei Wang1*Yu-Feng  LiYu-Feng Li2Xiaorong  WangXiaorong Wang1Ziwei  SongZiwei Song1Fajun  ChenFajun Chen1
  • 1China Agricultural University, Beijing, China
  • 2Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of High Energy Physics, Beijing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Microplastics (MPs), as emerging environmental contaminants, pose a significant threat to global food security. In order to rapidly screen and diagnosis rice seedling under MPs stress at an early stage, it is essential to develop efficient and non-destructive detection methods. In this study, rice seedlings exposed to different concentrations (0, 10, and 100 mg/L) of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polystyrene (PS), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) MPs stress were constructed. Two complementary spectroscopic techniques, visible/near-infrared hyperspectral imaging (VNIR-HSI) and synchrotron radiation-based Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (SR-FTIR), were employed to capture the biochemical changes of leaf organic molecules. The spectral information of rice seedlings under MPs stress was obtained by using VNIR-HSI, and the low-dimensional clustering distribution analysis of the original spectra was conducted. An improved SE-LSTM full-spectral detection model was proposed, and the detection accuracy rate was greater than 93.88%. Characteristic wavelengths were extracted to build a simplified detection model, and the SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) framework was applied to interpret the model by identifying the bands associated with chlorophyll, carotenoids, water content, and cellulose. Meanwhile, SR-FTIR spectroscopy was used to investigate compositional changes in both leaf lamina and veins, and two-dimensional correlation spectroscopy (2DCOS) was employed to reveal the sequential interactions among molecular components. In conclusion, the spectral detection method based on the physiological and biochemical reactions of rice seedling leaves could provide a rapid and interpretable solution for the early detection of crops under MPs stress.

Keywords: Microplastics, rice seedlings, Visible/near-infrared hyperspectral imaging, synchrotron radiation-based Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy, deep learning

Received: 11 Jun 2025; Accepted: 30 Jun 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Wei, Xie, Wang, Li, Wang, Song and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Wei Wang, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

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