Estimation of crop plant density at early mixed growth stages using UAV imagery

Abstract

© 2019 The Author(s). Background: Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with lightweight sensors are making a significant impact in field-based crop phenotyping. UAV platforms have been successfully deployed to acquire phenotypic data in a precise and efficient manner that would otherwise be time-consuming and costly to acquire when undertaken through manual assessment. One example is the estimation of plant density (or counts) in field experiments. Challenges posed to digital plant counting models are heterogenous germination and mixed growth stages that are present in field experiments with diverse genotypes. Here we describe, using safflower as an example, a method based on template ma..