Plant height is a key indicator to dynamically measure crop health and overall growth status, which is widely used to estimate the biological yield and final grain yield of crops. The traditional manual measurement method is subjective, inefficient, and time-consuming. And the plant height obtained by sampling cannot evaluate the height of the whole field. In the last decade, remote sensing technology has developed rapidly in agriculture, which makes it possible to collect crop height information with high accuracy, high frequency, and high efficiency. This paper firstly reviewed the literature on obtaining plant height by using remote sensing technology for understanding the research progress of height estimation in the field. Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platform with visible-light camera and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) were the most frequently used methods. And main research crops included wheat, corn, rice, and other staple food crops. Moreover, crop height measurement was mainly based on near-field remote sensing platforms such as ground, UAV, and airborne. Secondly, the basic principles, advantages, and limitations of different platforms and sensors for obtaining plant height were analyzed. The altimetry process and the key techniques of LiDAR and visible-light camera were discussed emphatically, which included extraction of crop canopy and soil elevation information, and feature matching of the imaging method. Then, the applications using plant height data, including the inversion of biomass, lodging identification, yield prediction, and breeding of crops were summarized. However, the commonly used empirical model has some problems such large measured data, unclear physical significance, and poor universality. Finally, the problems and challenges of near-field remote sensing technology in plant height acquisition were proposed. Selecting appropriate data to meet the needs of cost and accuracy, improving the measurement accuracy, and matching the plant height estimation of remote sensing with the agricultural application need to be considered. In addition, we prospected the future development was prospected from four aspects of 1) platform and sensor, 2) bare soil detection and interpolation algorithm, 3) plant height application research, and 4) the measurement difference of plant height between agronomy and remote sensing, which can provide references for future research and method application of near-field remote sensing height measurement.
Plant micro-phenotype mainly refers to the phenotypic information at the tissue, cell, and subcellular levels, which is an important part of plant phenomics research. In view of the problems of low efficiency, large error, and few traits of traditional methods for detecting kernel microscopic traits, Micro-CT scanning technology was used to carry out precise identification of micro-phenotype on 11 varieties of maize kernels. A total of 34 microscopic traits were obtained based on CT sequence images of 7 tissues, including seed, embryo, endosperm, cavity, subcutaneous cavity, endosperm cavity and embryo cavity. Among the 34 microscopic traits, 4 traits, including endosperm cavity surface area, kernel volume, endosperm volume ratio and endosperm cavity specific surface area, were significantly different among maize types (P-value<0.05). The surface area of endosperm cavity and kernel volume of common maize were significantly higher than those of other types of maize. The specific surface area of endosperm cavity of high oil maize was the largest. The endosperm cavity of sweet corn had the smallest specific surface area. The endosperm volume ration of popcorn was the largest. Furthermore, 34 traits were used for One-way ANOVA and cluster analysis, and 11 different maize varieties were divided into four categories, of which the first category was mainly common maize, the second category was mainly popcorn, the third category was sweet corn, and the fourth category was high oil maize. The results indicated that Micro-CT scanning technology could not only achieve precise identification of micro-phenotype of maize kernels, but also provide supports for kernel classification and variety detection, and so on.
In order to assess maize growth status accurately and quickly for improving maize precise management, field experiment was conducted in Gongzhuling research station, Jilin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Jilin province. Experimental design included 3 planting densities and 5 maize materials. The near-ground hyperspectral data and the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) hyperspectral images were obtained when maize were during V11－V12 stage. The application abilities of the hyperspectral data obtained from the two phenotyping platforms were compared and analyzed in the estimation of maize leaf area index (LAI) and aboveground biomass. In this study, 21 commonly used spectral vegetation indices were constructed based on ground hyperspectral data, and then the estimation models of maize LAI and aboveground biomass were established based on ground hyperspectral full-bands, UAV hyperspectral full-bands and vegetation indices and partial least square regression method, respectively. According to the variance estimation of regression coefficients, the important bands of LAI and aboveground biomass were selected, and the partial least square method was also used to establish the estimation model of maize LAI and aboveground biomass based on important bands. The results showed that the canopy spectral reflectance of the same maize material increased with the increase of planting density in the near infrared bands. Among the 5 maize materials under the same planting density, the canopy spectral reflectance of wild type material was the lowest in the visible and near infrared bands. For LAI, the model constructed based on vegetation indices had the best estimation result, with R2, RMSE and rRMSE values of 0.70, 0.92 and 15.94%. For aboveground biomass, the model constructed based on the sensitive spectral bands (839－893 nm and 1336－1348 nm) had the best estimation results, with R2, RMSE and rRMSE values of 0.71, 12.31 g and 15.89%, which showed that there was information redundancy in hyperspectral bands in the estimation of aboveground biomass, and the estimation accuracy could be improved by reducing the number of spectral bands and selecting sensitive spectral bands. In summary, the UAV hyperspectral images have a good application ability in the estimation of maize LAI and aboveground biomass, and can quickly and effectively extract the parameters information of maize growth. For specific parameters, sensitive spectral bands selected can provide reliable basis for the development and practical application of multi-spectrum in the future. The study can provide a reference for the use of hyperspectral technology in the management of precision agriculture at the community scale.
Accurate acquisition of crop canopy biochemical information is of great significance for monitoring crop growth and guiding precise fertilization. Previous vertical distribution researches of crop biochemical information were mainly based on hyperspectral inversion, which was lack of the association of plant photosynthesis physiology. This study mainly investigated the vertical distribution characteristics of biochemical parameters such as chlorophyll, carotenoid, dry matter, and water content in the oilseed rape canopy under different nitrogen treatments at the mid-seedling stage. The photosynthetic performance of leaves was measured by using fast chlorophyll fluorescence technology, and linear regression and principal component analysis were further implemented to explore the internal relationship between fluorescence response and biochemical parameters. The results showed that: (1) The chlorophyll content, carotenoid content, dry matter and water content of the rape canopy at the mid-seedling stage all showed a parabolic vertical distribution, while the ratio of chlorophyll to carotenoids content gradually decreases with the leaf position and nitrogen treatments, which was the same as the vertical distribution pattern of fluorescence parameters such as driving force comprehensive performance (DFTotal) and end electron chain quantum yield (φRo) and other fluorescence parameters could be used to diagnose nitrogen stress; (2) JIP-test parameters, especially DFTotal, had a good performance to evaluate the chlorophyll/carotenoids, chlorophyll and dry matter content of oilseed rape leaves; (3) Nitrogen deficiency would weaken the PSII and PSI performance of oilseed rape leaves at the mid-seedling stage, and the maximum photochemical efficiency (φPo) could be used to diagnose nitrogen stress. There was a significant difference in the PSI performance, namely electron transfer efficiency at the end acceptors of leaves in the different leaf position, hence the comprehensive performance parameter DFTotal could be an effective characterization of the vertical heterogeneity of canopy biochemical parameters. These findings indicated the feasibility of applying the rapid chlorophyll fluorescence technology to crop biochemical information heterogeneity monitoring and provided new ideas and technical support for guiding precise fertilization and achieving high-quality and high-yield.
To cope with the challenges posed by the rapid growth of world population and global environmental changes, scholars should employ genetic and phenotypic analyses to breed crop varieties with improved responses to limited resource environments and soil conditions to increase crop yield and quality. Therefore, the efficient, accurate, and non-destructive measurement of crop phenotypic traits, and the dynamic quantification of phenotypic traits are urgently needed for crop phenotypic research, and breeding as well as for modern agricultural development. In this study, cotton plants were taken as research objects, and the multi-temporal point cloud data of cotton plants were collected by using three-dimensional laser scanning technology. The multi-temporal point clouds of three cotton plants at four time points were collected. First, RANSAC algorithm was implemented for main stem extraction on the original point cloud data of cotton plants, then region growing based clustering was carried out for leaf segmentation. Plant height was estimated by calculating the end points of the segmented main stem. Leaf length and width measurements were conducted on the segmented leaf parts. In addition, the volume was also estimated through the convex hull of the original point cloud of plant cotton. Then, multi-temporal point clouds of plants were registered, and organ correspondence was constructed with the Hungarian method. Finally, dynamic quantification of phenotypic traits including plant volume, plant height, leaf length, leaf width, and leaf area were calculated and analyzed. The overall performance of the approaches achieved a matching rate through a series of experiments, and the traits extracted by using of point cloud showed high correlation with the manually measured ones. The relative error between plant height and manual measurement results did not exceed 1.0%. The estimated leaf length and width on point clouds were highly correlated with the manually measured ones, and the coefficient of determination was nearly 1.0. The proposed 3D phenotyping methodology can be introduced and used to other crops for phenotyping.
谷穗的检测和计数对于预测谷子产量和育种至关重要。但是，传统的谷穗计数主要基于人工统计，既费时又费力。为解决上述问题，本研究首先建立了一个包含784张图像和10,000个谷穗样本的谷穗检测数据集。提出了一种基于YOLOv4和自适应锚框调整的谷穗检测方法，可快速准确地检测特定框中的谷穗。通过自适应地调整锚框，可生成符合谷穗目标的候选框，从而提升检测的准确率。为验证该方法的有效性，采用了多个标准，包括平均精度（mAP），F1得分（F1-Score），精度（Precision）和召回率（Recall）进行评价。此外，设计了对比试验验证所提出方法的有效性，包括与其他模型（YOLOv2，YOLOv3和Faster-RCNN）进行比较来评估模型的性能，评估模型在不同交并比（IOU）取值下的性能，评估模型在自适应锚框调整下的谷穗检测性能，评估引起模型评价标准变化的原因，以及评估模型在不同原始输入图像尺寸下的性能。试验结果表明，YOLOv4获得了良好的谷穗检测性能。YOLOv4的mAP达到78.99%，F1-score达到83.00%，Precision达到87%和Recall达到79.00%，在所有评价标准上均比其他比较模型高出8%。试验结果表明，该方法具有较好的准确性和高效性。
Accurate and high-throughput maize plant phenotyping is vital for crop breeding and cultivation research. Tassel-related phenotypic parameters are important agronomic traits. However, fully automatic and fine tassel organ segmentation of maize shoots from three-dimensional (3D) point clouds is still challenging. To address this issue, a tassel point cloud segmentation method based on point cloud super voxels clustering and local geometric features was proposed in this study. Firstly, the undirected graph of the maize plant point cloud was established, the edge weights were calculated by using the difference of normal vectors, and the spectral clustering method was used to cluster the point cloud to form multiple super voxel sub-regions. Then, the principal component analysis method was used to find the two end regions of the plant and based on the observation of the straight direction of the bottom stem regions, the top and bottom regions were distinguished by the point cloud linear features. Finally, the tassel points were identified based on the plane local features of the point cloud. The sub-regions of the top region of the plant were classified into leaf regions, tassel regions, and mixed regions by plane local features of the point cloud, the tassel points in the tassel sub-region, and the mixed region were the finally segmented tassel point clouds. In this study, 15 mature maize plants with 3 point cloud densities were tested. Compared with the ground truth segmented manually, the average F1 scores of the tassel segmentation were 0.763, 0.875 and 0.889 when the point cloud density was 0.8/cm, 1.3/cm, and 1.9/cm, respectively. The segmentation accuracy of this method increased with the increase of plant point cloud density. The increase of point cloud density and the number of point clouds mainly affected the calculation results of point cloud plane features in tassel segmentation. When the number of point clouds was small, the top leaf point cloud was relatively sparse. Therefore, the difference between the plane feature of the leaf point and the plane feature of the tassel point was not obvious, which led to the increase of the misclassification of the point cloud. However, the time complexity of the algorithm was O(n3), so the increase in the density and number of point clouds would lead to a significant increase in the running time. Considering the segmentation accuracy and running time, the research obtained the best effect on the mature maize plants with a point cloud density of 1.3/cm and an average number of 15,000. The segmentation F1 score reached 0.875 and the running time was 6.85 s. The results showed that this method could extract tassels from maize plant point cloud, and provided technical support for the research and application of high-throughput phenotyping and three-dimensional reconstruction of maize.
Automatic grading method of pomelo fruit according to the shape and size is urgently needed in the industry since the work mainly depends on artificial judgment currently. In this research, a method, which detected the vertical and horizontal size of pomelo by using contour coordinate transformation fitting, fruit shape feature extraction and direction angle compensation algorithm, while it determined the shape defects based on fruit shape index, was proposed. The image acquisition system was self-designed and built up with a CMOS camera, a dot matrix LED light source, a plane mirror, the computer, a box and brackets. The image data containing whole surface information of Shatian pomelo samples with different sizes and shapes were collected by this system. The G-B component grayscale image was chosen for denoising and segmentation. The Laplacian edge detection algorithm was implemented to extract the edge pixels of the fruit. The polynomial fitting method was applied to converse the rectangular coordinates to polar coordinates so that the fruit shape description was simplified. The characteristic point polar angle value was used to compensate the random direction of the vertical and horizontal diameters of the sample. Then the vertical and horizontal diameters of fruit were calculated after classifying the sample shapes into the spherical and the pear-like categories. For the involved 168 pomelo samples, the average error, maximum absolute error and average relative error of the vertical diameters were 2.23 mm, 7.39 mm and 1.6% respectively, while these parameters of the horizontal diameters were 2.21 mm, 7.66 mm and 1.4% respectively. The fruit shape discriminant model was established by using BP neural network algorithm based on the seven features extracted from the fitting function and verified by independent validation set including 3 peak heights, 3 peak widths and 1 trough value difference. The total recognition rate of shape identification was 83.7%. The results illustrated that the method had the potential to measuring the pomelo size and shape for grading fast and non-destructively.
