The estimation of crop emergence in potatoes by UAV RGB imagery
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(2019) 15:15 Li et al. Plant Methods https://doi.org/10.1186/s13007-019-0399-7
Open Access
RESEARCH
The estimation of crop emergence in potatoes by UAV RGB imagery Bo Li1,2, Xiangming Xu2, Jiwan Han3, Li Zhang2, Chunsong Bian1, Liping Jin1* and Jiangang Liu1*
Abstract Background: Crop emergence and canopy cover are important physiological traits for potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) cultivar evaluation and nutrients management. They play important roles in variety screening, field management and yield prediction. Traditional manual assessment of these traits is not only laborious but often subjective. Results: In this study, semi-automated image analysis software was developed to estimate crop emergence from high-resolution RGB ortho-images captured from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Potato plant objects were extracted from bare soil using Excess Green Index and Otsu thresholding methods. Six morphological features were calculated from the images to be variables of a Random Forest classifier for estimating the number of potato plants at emergence stage. The outputs were then used to estimate crop emergence in three field experiments that were designed to investigate the effects of cultivars, levels of potassium (K) fertiliser input, and new compound fertilisers on potato growth. The results indicated that RGB UAV image analysis can accurately estimate potato crop emergence rate in comparison to manual assessment, with correlation coefficient ( r 2 ) of 0.96 and provide an efficient tool to evaluate emergence uniformity. Conclusions: The proposed UAV image analysis method is a promising tool for use as a high throughput phenotyping method for assessing potato crop development at emergence stage. It can also facilitate future studies on optimizing fertiliser management and improving emergence consistency. Keywords: Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), Potato, Image analysis, Remote sensing, Crop emergence, Random Forest Background Potato is one of the most important economic crops in the world with an annual production of more than 380 million tons [1]. Its yield is affected by many factors including cultivars and nutrient supplies [2]. China is the world’s largest potato producer and consumer, having 5.8 million hectares of cultivated area. In order to improve potato yield, the utilization of resources such as chemical fertilisers and pesticides has increased steadily, leading to potential economic waste and environmental pollution [3]. Optimization of nutrient management strategies is required for all commercial potato cultivars in China. *Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected] 1 Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS)/Key Laboratory of Biology and Genetic Improvement of Tuber and Root Crops, Ministry of Agriculture, Beijing, China Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Potato emergence dynamics, including emergence rate and uniformity, play important roles in screening varieties [4], field management [5, 6] and yield
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