Raw leaf reflectance spectra of maize collected to quantify how specimen preparation and subsequent storage change the reflectance signal of herbarium material.
The deposit contains 1,539 unmodified CSV exports from a CI-710 Miniature Leaf Spectrometer (CID Bio-Science), one file per replicate measurement, acquired throughout in Reflectance mode with an integration time of 400 ms, boxcar width 2 and scans-to-average 1. Spectra were recorded for 44 individuals of eight maize (Zea mays L.) inbred lines — B68 (n = 1), B73 (n = 6), OH43 (n = 4), S299 (n = 6), S17134 (n = 8), S42211-21 (n = 5), S64417 (n = 6) and S74002 (n = 8) — at three stages: fresh (219 files), after drying (660) and after accelerated ageing (660), with three to seven replicates per sample.
The third fully expanded leaf of each plant was measured fresh, cut into three pieces, and each piece was air-dried (room temperature, blotting paper), oven-dried (38 °C, 72 h) or lyophilized. The dried pieces were allocated by a balanced Latin-square rotation to three accelerated-ageing regimes run in a programmable climate chamber (CTS Clima Temperatur Systeme GmbH, Hechingen, Germany): fluctuating temperature (15 and 40 °C at 50% RH), fluctuating relative humidity (25 and 75% RH at 20 °C), and both combined (15 °C/75% RH and 40 °C/25% RH). Each regime repeated an 8-h cycle for 28 days.
File names follow LINE.INDIVIDUAL[.DRYING[.AGEING]].REPLICATE.csv, where drying is coded P (air-dried), C (oven-dried) or L (lyophilized) and ageing T (temperature), H (relative humidity) or B (both); fresh files carry neither code. sample_manifest.csv lists one row per raw file with these identifiers already parsed. The analysis code that turns these files into the published tables and figures is at https://github.com/k-frankiewicz/reflectance.
