QRFODD: Quaternion Riesz fractional order directional derivative for color image edge detection

•Approach based on Quaternion Riesz Fractional Order Directional Derivative (QRFODD) for color edge detection.•Assessment of performance of proposed approach on the basis of qualitative and quantitative measures such as Pratt’s Figure of Merit (FOM) and F-Score.•Validation of proposed approach by taking into account uncontrolled conditions of noise, JPEG compression, and illumination.•To confirm the capability of QRFODD technique in the realistic scenarios.