Owner's Manual

Species for which chlorophyll concentration can be directly determined with MC-100
All Species
Generic Equation (used for species not listed below)
Annual Crop Species
Rice
Wheat
Soybean
Barley
Pepper
Tomato
Pea
Kohlrabi
Lettuce, cultivar Waldman’s Green
Lettuce, cultivar Buttercrunch
Corn
Sorghum
Cannabis
Coffee
Spinach
Strawberry
Cherry
Blackberry
Deciduous Species
Quaking Aspen
European Birch
Paper Birch
Crimson King Maple
Norway Maple
Japanese Maple
Boxelder
Crab Apple
Purple Leaf Sand Cherry
Lilac
Forsythia
Hops
Grapevine*
* Coefficients for grapevine were derived from data collected and supplied by Everard Edwards and Tarita Shiraishi
Furlan, CSIRO Agriculture & Food.
A major advantage of the Apogee Instruments model MC-100 over other hand-held chlorophyll meters is
conversion of relative chlorophyll content to actual chlorophyll concentration (i.e., linearization of the output).
Chlorophyll meters typically output an index that is non-linearly related to chlorophyll concentration (e.g., CCI or
SPAD). The MC-100 outputs an estimate of actual chlorophyll concentration in units of µmol per m
2
of leaf surface,
thus changes in the displayed output are true changes in chlorophyll concentration. For example, a doubling of
measured chlorophyll concentration represents an actual doubling in a plant leaf, whereas a doubling of a relative
index does not necessarily represent a doubling of actual chlorophyll concentration in the leaf. This concept is
illustrated for CCI and SPAD index measurements on rice leaves in the graphs below.