scholarly journals Estimation of maize plant height and leaf area index dynamics using an unmanned aerial vehicle with oblique and nadir photography

2020 ◽  
Vol 126 (4) ◽  
pp. 765-773 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yingpu Che ◽  
Qing Wang ◽  
Ziwen Xie ◽  
Long Zhou ◽  
Shuangwei Li ◽  
...  

Abstract Background and Aims High-throughput phenotyping is a limitation in plant genetics and breeding due to large-scale experiments in the field. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can help to extract plant phenotypic traits rapidly and non-destructively with high efficiency. The general aim of this study is to estimate the dynamic plant height and leaf area index (LAI) by nadir and oblique photography with a UAV, and to compare the integrity of the established three-dimensional (3-D) canopy by these two methods. Methods Images were captured by a high-resolution digital RGB camera mounted on a UAV at five stages with nadir and oblique photography, and processed by Agisoft Metashape to generate point clouds, orthomosaic maps and digital surface models. Individual plots were segmented according to their positions in the experimental design layout. The plant height of each inbred line was calculated automatically by a reference ground method. The LAI was calculated by the 3-D voxel method. The reconstructed canopy was sliced into different layers to compare leaf area density obtained from oblique and nadir photography. Key Results Good agreements were found for plant height between nadir photography, oblique photography and manual measurement during the whole growing season. The estimated LAI by oblique photography correlated better with measured LAI (slope = 0.87, R2 = 0.67), compared with that of nadir photography (slope = 0.74, R2 = 0.56). The total number of point clouds obtained by oblique photography was about 2.7–3.1 times than those by nadir photography. Leaf area density calculated by nadir photography was much less than that obtained by oblique photography, especially near the plant base. Conclusions Plant height and LAI can be extracted automatically and efficiently by both photography methods. Oblique photography can provide intensive point clouds and relatively complete canopy information at low cost. The reconstructed 3-D profile of the plant canopy can be easily recognized by oblique photography.

2020 ◽  
Vol 292-293 ◽  
pp. 108101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shanshan Wei ◽  
Tiangang Yin ◽  
Maria Angela Dissegna ◽  
Andrew J. Whittle ◽  
Genevieve Lai Fern Ow ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Francois Pimont ◽  
Maxime Soma ◽  
Jean-Luc Dupuy

The amount and spatial distribution of foliage in a tree canopy have fundamental functions in ecosystems as they affect energy and mass fluxes through photosynthesis and transpiration. They are usually described by the Leaf Area Index (LAI) and the Leaf Area Density (LAD), which can be measured through a variety of methods, including voxel-based methods applied to LiDAR point clouds. A theoretical study recently compared the numerical errors arising from different voxel-based estimation methods for Plant Area Density (PAD) based on Beer’s law-based, contact frequency and Maximum-Likelihood Estimation, showing that the bias-corrected Maximum Likelihood Estimator was theoretically the most efficient. However, this earlier study i) ignored wood volumes; ii) neglected vegetation clumping inside the voxel; iii) ignored instrument characteristics in terms of effective footprint, iv) was limited to a single viewpoint. In practice, retrieving LAD from PAD is not straightforward, vegetation is not randomly distributed in volumes of interest, beams are divergent and forestry plots are usually sampled from more than one viewpoint, to mitigate the effect of occlusion. In the present short communication, we extend the previous efficient formulation to actual field conditions to i) account for the presence of both wood volumes and wood hits, ii) rigorously include correction terms for vegetation and instrument characteristics, iii) integrate multiview data. A numerical comparison with other methods commonly used to combine information from different viewpoints led to error reduction, especially in poorly-explored volumes, which are frequent in actual canopies. Beyond its concision, completeness and efficiency, this new formulation -which can be applied to multiview TLS, but also UAV LiDAR scanning - can help reducing errors in LAD estimation.


Silva Fennica ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Akihiro Sumida ◽  
Taro Nakai ◽  
Masahito Yamada ◽  
Kiyomi Ono ◽  
Shigeru Uemura ◽  
...  

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 371-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. K. Paul ◽  
M. A. B. Miah

An investigation has been made to characterize the local accessions of Elephant foot yam collected from thirteen aroid growing districts and in-depth study on genetic variability, correlation and path coefficient for plant height, petiole length, petiole breadth, leaf area index, corm length, corm breadth, corm weight, cormel number, cormel length, cormel breadth, cormel weight and yield per plant has also been carried out. Genotypic variances and coefficient of variation for most of the characters were remarkably higher than their corresponding environmental variances, which also indicate the existence of variation in genotypic origin. High heritability with high genetic advance in percentage of mean was also observed for all characters. In the correlation study plant height, leaf area index, corm length, corm breadth, corm weight, cormel number, cormel length, cormel breath showed positive correlation with yield per plant in genotypic and phenotypic level. Leaf area index, cormel number in phenotypically and cormel number in genotypic level showed relatively high positive direct effect on yield per plant.Keywords: Amorphophallus; Genetic variability; Correlation; Path coefficient.© 2013 JSR Publications. ISSN: 2070-0237 (Print); 2070-0245 (Online). All rights reserved.doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jsr.v5i2.13853        J. Sci. Res. 5 (2), 371-381 (2013)


1996 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 241-241
Author(s):  
Gene Burris ◽  
Don Cook ◽  
B. R. Leonard ◽  
J. B. Graves ◽  
J. Pankey

Abstract The test was conducted at the Northeast Research Station in St. Joseph, LA. Plots were replicated 4 times in a RCB design and were four rows (40-inch spacing) X 65 ft. ‘Stoneville LA 887’ cotton seed was planted 2 and 3 May on a commerce silt soil which was fertilized sidedress with 90 lb N/acre. Cotton seed were planted with a John Deere model 7100 series planter which was equipped with 10 inch seed cones mounted to replace the seed hoppers. The seed rate was 4 seed/row ft. Granular in-furrow treatments were applied with 8 inch belt cone applicators mounted to replace the standard granular applicators. Control of thrips and aphids was evaluated on 5 randomly selected plants/plot. Evaluations were made on 18, 19, 24, 26, and 29 May and 8 Jun. Plant height counts were taken on 10 randomly selected plants/plot on 8 Jun. Stand density and leaf area was determined by counting the number of plants in a randomly selected meter on 29 May. Leaf area was recorded using a Li Cor leaf area machine. The data was recorded as cm2 and converted to a leaf area index (LAI). Major pests and/or secondary pest control was initiated in Jun and continued on an “as needed” basis through Aug.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Samuel Maina ◽  
Rossa Nyoike Ng’endo

Maize (Zea mays L.) is a significant food security crop in Kenya and it serves as the main source of nutrition and calories among the small-holder farmers. The overall maize yields per hectare have been fluctuating in the past few years posing a great risk to food security. Among the stress factors associated with maize yield loss include plant-feeding nematodes. In this regard, this study was conducted to evaluate the impacts of plant-parasitic nematodes specifically Scutellonema spp. under field conditions on maize performance in Mwea, Kenya. The field trials were laid out in a randomized complete block design with each treatment comprising of four replicates. The treatments included maize plots without nematicide (MPWN) and control plots treated with nematicide. The experiments were conducted in two trials. Soil samples were taken at a 0–20 cm depth at monthly intervals during 2018–2019. During the two trials, MPWN recorded significantly lower plant height and number of leaves per plant. Correlation analysis revealed a significant negative relationship between Scutellonema abundance with leaf area index, plant height, and number of functional leaves in MPWN during the 2019 trial. This implies that high population of Scutellonema perhaps has the potential to affect leaf area index, plant height, number of leaves per plant, which are aspects that in turn influence maize productivity. Therefore, holistic sustainable management practices to control Scutellonema spp. in maize fields such as use of organic amendments, resistant maize cultivars, and antagonistic organisms are crucial in order to alleviate negative impacts linked to Scutellonema infestation.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milad Mahmoodzadeh ◽  
Phalguni Mukhopadhyaya ◽  
Caterina Valeo

A comprehensive parametric analysis was conducted to evaluate the influence of the green roof design parameters on the thermal or energy performance of a secondary school building in four distinctively different climate zones in North America (i.e., Toronto, ON, Canada; Vancouver, BC, Canada; Las Vegas, NV, USA and Miami, FL, USA). Soil moisture content, soil thermal properties, leaf area index, plant height, leaf albedo, thermal insulation thickness and soil thickness were used as design variables. Optimal parameters of green roofs were found to be functionally related to meteorological conditions in each city. In terms of energy savings, the results showed that the light-weight substrate had better thermal performance for the uninsulated green roof. Additionally, the recommended soil thickness and leaf area index for all four cities were 15 cm and 5 respectively. The optimal plant height for the cooling dominated climates is 30 cm and for the heating dominated cities is 10 cm. The plant albedo had the least impact on the energy consumption while it was effective in mitigating the heat island effect. Finally, unlike the cooling load, which was largely influenced by the substrate and vegetation, the heating load was considerably affected by the thermal insulation instead of green roof design parameters.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 423-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohan Mahato ◽  
Bishnu Bilas Adhikari

A field experiment was conducted under humid subtropical agro-climatic condition of Nepal during rainy season of 2014. The experiment was laid out in to two factor Randomized Complete Block Design with  three replications consisting three drought tolerant rice varieties (Sukhadhan-4, Sukhadhan-5 and Radha-4) and four planting geometry (15 cm × 10 cm, 15 cm × 15 cm, 20 cm × 15 cm and 20 cm × 20 cm). The results revealed that the highest plant height and maximum leaf area index was recorded in planting geometry 15 cm × 10 cm in all growth stages. Whereas, planting geometry 20 cm × 15 cm produced the maximum number of tiller m-2 in all growth stage.  While planting geometry 20 cm × 15 cm and 20 cm × 20 cm produced statistically similar crop growth rate and dry matter accumulation in all stage of growth. Regarding the varieties, Sukhadhan- 4 showed highest plant height up to 75 DAT and plant height was statistically similar to Radha - 4 in 60 and 75 DAT. But maximum number of tiller m-2, leaf area index, crop growth rate and dry matter accumulation were recorded in Sukhadhan – 5 varieties. Int. J. Appl. Sci. Biotechnol. Vol 5(4): 423-429


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
Tiangang Yin ◽  
Jianbo Qi ◽  
Bruce D. Cook ◽  
Douglas C. Morton ◽  
Shanshan Wei ◽  
...  

Airborne lidar point clouds of vegetation capture the 3-D distribution of its scattering elements, including leaves, branches, and ground features. Assessing the contribution from vegetation to the lidar point clouds requires an understanding of the physical interactions between the emitted laser pulses and their targets. Most of the current methods to estimate the gap probability ( P gap ) or leaf area index (LAI) from small-footprint airborne laser scan (ALS) point clouds rely on either point-number-based (PNB) or intensity-based (IB) approaches, with additional empirical correlations with field measurements. However, site-specific parameterizations can limit the application of certain methods to other landscapes. The universality evaluation of these methods requires a physically based radiative transfer model that accounts for various lidar instrument specifications and environmental conditions. We conducted an extensive study to compare these approaches for various 3-D forest scenes using a point-cloud simulator developed for the latest version of the discrete anisotropic radiative transfer (DART) model. We investigated a range of variables for possible lidar point intensity, including radiometric quantities derived from Gaussian Decomposition (GD), such as the peak amplitude, standard deviation, integral of Gaussian profiles, and reflectance. The results disclosed that the PNB methods fail to capture the exact P gap as footprint size increases. By contrast, we verified that physical methods using lidar point intensity defined by either the distance-weighted integral of Gaussian profiles or reflectance can estimate P gap and LAI with higher accuracy and reliability. Additionally, the removal of certain additional empirical correlation coefficients is feasible. Routine use of small-footprint point-cloud radiometric measures to estimate P gap and the LAI potentially confirms a departure from previous empirical studies, but this depends on additional parameters from lidar instrument vendors.


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