Cinchona plants are a primary sourc

Cinchona plants are a primary source of quinine for use in the treatment of malaria. One
source for these plants is the steep hills in southern India. Sengupta, Chakravarti, and
Sarkar (1951) conducted a study for the Indian government with the goal of estimating
dry bark and quinine content of these plants. However, the measurement of dry bark
quinine yield requires uprooting the plant, stripping the bark, and drying it until a reliable
weight can be obtained. This can be a time-consuming and costly operation. Fortunately, a
simultaneous investigation demonstrated that dry bark quinine yield was highly correlated
with the volume of bark in the growing plant, computed as a function of the total height
of the plant and girths and thicknesses of the bark at a number of different heights
above ground level. All of these measurements can be made with little cost and without
uprooting and destruction of the plant. This is an ideal setting for the use of RSS with