Abstract
Plant height (PH) data collected at high temporal resolutions can give insight into how genotype and environmental variation influence plant growth. However, in order to increase the temporal resolution of PH data collection, more robust, rapid, and low‐cost methods are needed to evaluate field plots than those currently available. Due to their low cost and high functionality, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) provide an efficient means for collecting height at various stages throughout development. We have developed a procedure for utilizing structure from motion algorithms to collect PH from RGB drone imagery and have used this platform to characterize a yield trial consisting of 24 maize hybrids planted in replicate under two dates and three planting densities. PH data was collected using both weekly UAV flights and manual measurements. The comparisons of UAV‐based and manually acquired PH measurements revealed sources of error in measuring PH and were used to develop a robust pipeline for generating UAV‐based PH estimates. This pipeline was utilized to document differences in the rate of growth between genotypes and planting dates. Our results also demonstrate that growth rates generated by PH measurements collected at multiple timepoints early in development can be useful in improving predictions of PH at the end of the season. This method provides a low cost, high throughput method for evaluating plant growth in response to environmental stimuli on a plot basis that can be implemented at the scale of a breeding program.
Highlights
Plant height (PH) serves as a major growth indicator and can be used for assessing crop productivity and making crop management decisions
High-throughput collection of plant height measurements throughout the growing season can provide a better understanding of how different environments influence maize growth and can help to dissect the underlying cause of end of season genotype x environment (GxE) interactions that are commonly observed
High-throughput collection of plant height measurements throughout the growing season can allow a better understanding of how different environments influence maize growth and can reveal important factors affecting crop productivity
Summary
Plant height (PH) serves as a major growth indicator and can be used for assessing crop productivity and making crop management decisions. PH has been shown to be linked to nitrogen (N) nutrition during vegetative development in maize (Yin et al, 2011-1), making it useful for assessing spatial variability in crop response to N. Tracking plant height at these earlier stages and throughout development can help to identify superior cultivars in plant breeding programs and for developing management practices that account for spatial heterogeneity in production fields. To maximize the utility of PH data, height at various stages throughout development needs to be gathered, and with current methods for measuring height this can be challenging. Similar to many phenotypic traits, current practices of gathering height in field settings involve physically measuring PH with a large ruler, which is time consuming and difficult to implement on a large scale. Ruler measurements are subject to user bias and error, decreasing the accuracy and utility of these measurements
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