High-throughput phenotyping platforms (HTPPs)

HTPPs are a fast and non-invasive tool for phenotyping plant populations under field conditions. The most common HTPPs in agriculture are ground-wheeled or aerial vehicles equipped with multiple sensors for imaging based on geographic information systems (GIS). The reflected light captured in these images can be used to draw inference about many traits, including:

• Geometric traits (i.e. plant height, leaf area index, lodging, crop canopy cover)
• Canopy spectral texture (spectral features)
• Physiological traits (i.e., chlorophyll, biomass, pigment content, photosynthesis)
• Abiotic/biotic stress indicators (i.e., stomatal conductance, canopy temperature difference, leaf water potential, senescence index)
• Nutrients (nitrogen concentration, protein content)
• Yield

Plant Breeding

In plant breeding usually experimental fields have:

• Small plots (early stages)
• Large number of different genotypes
• Fast phenotyping (window of time to collect data)

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in HTPPs could be an excellent option once they can reach high resolution (centimeter level), provide high-quality hyperspectral data, cover a versatility of sensors, and have a competitive price.

FIELDimageR

FIELDimageR is a R package to analyze orthomosaic images from agricultural field trials. This package is a compilation of functions to analyze post-mosaicking images from research fields, and allows to:

• Crop the image
• Remove soil effect
• Build vegetation indices
• Rotate the image
• Build the plot shapefile
• Extract information for each plot
• Evaluate stand count, canopy percentage, and plant height