Development of an Imaging Tool for Commercial Mushroom Yield and Quality Estimation

Cultivation and production of mushrooms has increased during the previous decade. The production increase is due to the development of farms combined with the rise in consumer’s general understanding of the medicinal and dietary benefits of mushrooms consumption. Improvements in mycology and agricultural technology have allowed farmers to increase their mushroom production. Farmers have been able to create microclimates with specific growing conditions that encourage mushroom growth for large-scale harvesting. Although technological advancements have increased production volume, taking measurements of the size and quality of mushrooms is an arduous process that requires a lot of labor hours to complete. Different methods have been used and proposed to assess the size and quality of mushrooms. Computer based image processing is a promising method to tackle this task by implementing image processing and analysis techniques. Computer aided analytical tool can assist farmers by counting, taking measurements, determining the growth rate of mushrooms and calculating the crop yield. Having this information would allow farmers to adjust microclimate conditions and coordinate harvesting schedules to pick mushrooms when quality is at their peak. This thesis takes a different approach to other projects by collecting image data from a large-scale commercial mushroom farm. The main goal of this paper is to develop a system that can support mushroom farmers decision to become more efficient and to evaluate the feasibility of implementing computer vison assistance in an actual mushroom farm.