Small Unmanned Aerial Systems for High-throughput Phenotyping

摘要

Phenotyping is an important agricultural approach that combines methodologies and protocols to quantify plant growth, structure and composition at different scales of organisation, from organs to canopies. The interest in accurate phenotyping is motivated by the global challenge of ensuring crop yield for food and fuel generation using fewer resources while reducing the environmental impact (e.g., diminishing agricultural land, efficient use of nitrogen fertilisers, and correlating genotype and phenotype traits for advancing crop yield). Traditional phenotyping is based on destructive, labour-intensive and time-consuming approaches that are mainly conducted in a controlled environment with limited coverage such as greenhouses. Such limitations are the cause of phenotyping being the bottleneck of advancing crop yield while reducing the impact of agricultural practices on the environment (e.g. reducing the use of nitrogen-based fertilisers). Therefore, novel phenotyping techniques are critical to alleviate the above-mentioned challenges. In this regard, directly georef-erenced passive and active imaging sensors operating in different portions of the electromagnetic spectrum could be utilised for innovative high-throughput phenotyping, which is non-destructive and non-invasive while being capable of providing abundant and diversified information. Mobile sensor systems onboard tractors, tethered balloons, manned aircrafts, and unmanned aerial systems (LJASs) are becoming popular thanks to their potential for collecting data that is conducive to automated phenotyping. Among the above-mentioned mobile platforms, small unmanned aerial systems (sUASs) are rapidly gaining momentum as one of the best approaches for high-throughput plant phenotyping. The ability of sUASs to fly lower compared with manned aerial systems allows them to collect geospatial data at high resolution while covering larger areas than wheel-based systems. The low cost of consumer-grade sUASs is another advantage that makes them more appealing.