Modeling the Performance Parameters of Pollen Grains of Male Date Palms Using an Artificial Neural Network Based on the Mineral Composition and Morphological Properties of Their Leaves

One of the key factors for sustainability in agricultural systems, particularly, for cultivation of date palms, is the identification of the performance parameters of the pollen grains of male date palms (<i>Phoenix dactylifera</i> L.). This study was carried out to predict the performance parameters of pollen grains using an artificial neural network (ANN) model. The morphological features of spathe length, spathe weight, number of pinnae per leaf, leaf length, leaf width, length of the pinna part, pinna length, pinna width, length of the spathe stem, and spathe width, as well as the concentrations of minerals such as Mg, N, K, P, and Ca in their leaves were used as inputs to the ANN model. For this purpose, we collected the required data from nine male date palms grown in Saudi Arabia. The ANN model utilized in this work included an input layer with 15 parameters, a hidden layer of 30 neurons, and an output layer with 8 neurons. The ANN model was trained with 27 patterns. Seven patterns were utilized for testing purposes. The coefficient of determination (R²) obtained between the observed and predicted performance parameters’ values using the testing dataset was 0.902 for the number of strands per spathe, 0.967 for strand length, 0.963 for the number of flowers per strand, 0.941 for the number of flowers per spathe, 0.985 for the weight of pollen grains per spathe, 0.810 for the pollen grains’ viability, 0.936 for the pollen grains’ length, and 0.992 for the pollen grains’ width. The length of the spathe stem had the most critical effect on how the ANN model predicted the values of the dependent variables, i.e., the number of strands per spathe, with a percentage of contribution of 17.66%; the weight of pollen grains per spathe, with 17.85%; the pollen grains’ length, with 19.78%, and the pollen grains’ width, with a percentage of contribution of 30.59%. Spathe weight had the most critical influence on strand length and pollen grains’ viability, with percentages of 26.29% and 14.92%, respectively. Leaf width had the most critical effect on the number of flowers per spathe, with a percentage of 12.55%. The elemental concentration of K in the male date palm leaves had the most critical effect on the number of flowers per strand, with a percentage of 13.98%. It was therefore concluded that using a modeling process with the ANN technique can help estimate the performance parameters of male date palms’ pollen grains for different purposes, such as providing a starting point for mathematical analyses associated with the physiological mechanisms of male date palm. Moreover, the outcomes of this research work can be supportive as a practical tool in this field of study.