Quantification of lettuce leaf DUS test traits and phenotypic fingerprint construction for variety identification

Rapid and accurate identification of DUS (Distinctness, Uniformity, and Stability) test traits in lettuce leaves is essential for advancing multi-omics-driven intelligent breeding. It also plays a critical role in germplasm protection and enhancing agricultural competitiveness. However, the phenotypic traits of lettuce leaves are highly diverse and complex due to both genotypic variation and environmental influences, posing significant challenges for precise DUS trait quantification. To address these challenges, we propose a high-precision phenotypic trait extraction pipeline and introduce an interpretable phenotypic fingerprinting framework for lettuce subgroup identification. First, a lightweight semantic segmentation network guided by group attention is developed to extract leaf components. Then, shape, color, and texture traits are comprehensively quantified. Following UPOV (International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants) guidelines, we establish quantitative methods for seven DUS test traits: leaf shape, leaf tip shape, leaf margin shape, leaf vein shape, color hue, brightness, and anthocyanin coloration. Finally, PCA (Principal component analysis) was used to select 13 key traits, capturing over 95.82% of the total variance, for constructing “phenotypic ID” of lettuce varieties. Experiments conducted on 709 lettuce leaf image datasets showed that the accuracy of subgroup identification based on phenotypic fingerprints reached 98.59%. This study offers a scalable approach for automated DUS test trait evaluation and intelligent crop variety identification, providing a novel paradigm with strong potential for application in precision breeding and germplasm resource management.