Unmanned aerial platform-based multi-spectral imaging for field phenotyping of maize

BackgroundRecent developments in unmanned aerial platforms (UAP) have provided research opportunities in assessing land allocation and crop physiological traits, including response to abiotic and biotic stresses. UAP-based remote sensing can be used to rapidly and cost-effectively phenotype large numbers of plots and field trials in a dynamic way using time series. This is anticipated to have tremendous implications for progress in crop genetic improvement.ResultsWe present the use of a UAP equipped with sensors for multispectral imaging in spatial field variability assessment and phenotyping for low-nitrogen (low-N) stress tolerance in maize. Multispectral aerial images were used to (1) characterize experimental fields for spatial soil-nitrogen variability and (2) derive indices for crop performance under low-N stress. Overall, results showed that the aerial platform enables to effectively characterize spatial field variation and assess crop performance under low-N stress. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data derived from spectral imaging presented a strong correlation with ground-measured NDVI, crop senescence index and grain yield.ConclusionThis work suggests that the aerial sensing platform designed for phenotyping studies has the potential to effectively assist in crop genetic improvement against abiotic stresses like low-N provided that sensors have enough resolution for plot level data collection. Limitations and future potential uses are also discussed.

• Publication year

  2015

• Venue

  Plant Methods

• Publication date

  2015-06-24

• Fields of study

  Agricultural and Food Sciences, Medicine, Engineering, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1186/s13007-015-0078-2PMID 26106438PMCID 4477614
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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