High-throughput digital image based phenotyping in crop plants

Digital Imagebased phenotyping in Predictive Breeding 

Digital image-based phenotyping is crucial for automating data collection in field plants, offering numerous advantages in precision agriculture and plant research. Here are the key reasons why it is important:

1. High-Throughput and Efficient Data Collection

• Traditional manual phenotyping is time-consuming and labor-intensive.
• Digital imaging enables rapid, large-scale data acquisition with minimal human intervention.

2. Non-Destructive and Continuous Monitoring

• Unlike traditional methods that may require destructive sampling, digital imaging allows repeated measurements over time.
• This helps track plant growth, health, and responses to environmental conditions without damaging crops.

3. Precision and Accuracy

• Advanced imaging techniques (e.g., hyperspectral, thermal, LiDAR) provide detailed and precise phenotypic data.
• These technologies reduce human errors and improve measurement consistency.

4. Scalability for Large Fields

• Digital image-based phenotyping can be deployed using drones, satellites, and ground-based sensors.
• This allows the monitoring of entire fields rather than just small sample areas.

5. Automation and AI Integration

• Machine learning and AI can analyze images to extract meaningful traits such as plant height, leaf area, disease symptoms, and biomass.
• Automated processing reduces human workload and speeds up decision-making.

6. Early Stress and Disease Detection

• Multispectral and thermal imaging can detect plant stress (e.g., drought, nutrient deficiencies, pests, and diseases) before visible symptoms appear.
• Early detection helps in timely intervention, improving crop yield and quality.

7. Cost-Effectiveness

• Although initial investments in imaging systems may be high, long-term benefits include reduced labor costs, increased efficiency, and improved crop management.

8. Supports Smart Agriculture and Precision Farming

• Digital imaging provides real-time data that can be integrated with IoT and precision farming technologies.
• This helps in optimizing irrigation, fertilization, and pest control strategies.

9. Enhances Genetic and Breeding Research

• Image-based phenotyping aids in evaluating genetic traits and breeding new crop varieties with improved resilience and productivity.
• High-throughput imaging accelerates breeding programs by providing rapid trait assessments.

10. Climate Adaptation and Sustainability

• Digital phenotyping helps study plant responses to climate variations, enabling better adaptation strategies.
• It supports sustainable agriculture by reducing input wastage and improving resource efficiency.

By integrating digital imaging with automation, AI, and robotics, plant phenotyping is becoming faster, more accurate, and highly scalable, transforming agriculture into a data-driven, precision-based field.

Would you like more details on specific imaging technologies or applications?

10 Aspects that tells how Farm Automation is Revolutionizing the Agriculture Productivity

         Farm Automation in modern era

       World population is expanding by time, it is reported that about 10 billion population will be expected at the year of 2050. Excessive colonization and population is demanding precision agriculture and smart farming to increase the productivity. Farm automation is in different forms which are discussed below:

1. Harvesting automation in fruits and vegetables are the problem solving steps to save the productivity and reduce the harvest loses like Agrobot and Abundant Robots are working on commercial robots for harvesting fruits in America.
2. Automated tractors is another important form of automation in farming that reduce labor cost and shorten the time duration especially in row farming. different companies like Rabbit Tractors and Bear Flag Robotics are working on driver less robot and programmed tractors for cultivation.
3. Robot for seeding are also commercialized in these days that can helpful in sowing various crops fast.
4. Farm automation through weeding robots that reduce herbicide application about 90% accurate at farm level. Some companies are also working on automated weedicide robots like Blue River Technology and ecoRobotix etc,.
5. Subsurface drip irrigation is another form of automatic irrigation at commercial farm level that reduce wastage of water and labor cost.
6. Planting from air drones are used for sowing and fertilization from the air in current era. Some companies are commercially preparing such as drones like Droneseed and Biocarbon.
7. Soil automated sensors are used to investigated and signal the farms about irrigation requirement of soil that ultimately enhance the yield e.g., CropX is a company that install soil sensor for the irrigation requirement etc. 
8. A harvester kit is also operated with harvester or combine with the tractor to harvest specific crop at huge area without driver operated operation. A company Autocart is offering this kit.
9. Compact tractors are prepared for the farm machinery for vineyard and gardens where compacted planting is done.
10. Obstacle detection technology is also fitted in automated tractors to identify the obstacle in farm  automated machinery.

               The above discussed technologies revolutionized the agriculture and enhanced the productivity about 100 times from the previous century. By subsidizing the agricultural farm automated machinery in underdeveloped and developing countries yield gap can be reduce. A huge yield gap is persisted in these countries can be reduce and enhance the productivity of agricultural commodities at world level.

Referral Links:

• https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com
• https://www.engineering.com
• https://www.agriculture.com/robots-on-the-rise
• https://asirobots.com/farming/

10 Powerful Roles of Drones in Agriculture That Dramatically Enhanced Productivity

 Modern Technological Use of Drones in Agriculture

            Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) are simple known as drones because their size is low and of two types automated (controlled automatically) or manually controlled. The weight remained maximum up to 20 kilograms. There are different kinds of drones used in agriculture in know a days which includes fixed wing, rotary wing, tethered vehicle and lighter than air. Currently drones are used in different activities in agriculture which ar given below:

1. Drones are used to investigate the irrigation requirement of the crops that supports the consumptive and homogenized use of water. These are the need of current century in which limited supply of water available for crops.
2. This technology is quite helpful in pest and disease scouting in crops. With UAV larger area could be covered in less time and labor. In this approach there will be less error chances as compared to labor method.
3. To count the number of plants, density and overall crop health can be measured through drones and different yield related traits can measure in short duration.
4. Soil analysis is easy through drones in which soil general health, organic matter, water requirement, and level etc,.
5. This advancement is predominantly applied in forest to capture larger area monitoring, evaluation and research to analyze the growth or decline in forest area.
6. In fisheries, drones are using in many countries like Brazil to investigate the fish population in different natural resources.
7. Wildlife conservation is also analyzed easily through drones in which animals track, analyze and monitor the population through thermal cameras became easier.
8.  Application of artificial chemicals like fertilizer, pesticides and weedicide etc,.
9. It is reported fact that some drones are also used for planting at huge level.
10. These are helpful to investigate the nutrient deficiency in crop plants.

 

Links for Reference:

1. https://blog.agrivi.com/post/powerful-role-of-drones-in-agriculture_april2018
2. http://www.fao.org/3/I8494EN/i8494en.pdf
3. https://www.precisionag.com/market-watch/the-future-of-satellites-in-precision-agriculture/
4. https://www.slideshare.net/RedmondRaminShamshir/choosing-the-best-uav-drones-for-precision-agriculture-and-smart-farming-agricultural-drone-buyers-guide-for-farmers-and-agriculture-service-professionals

10 Modern Ways Of Artificial Intelligence Application in Agriculture in Developed countries

Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture

Artificial Intelligence is computer operated automated intelligence used for the management of crops  to achieve the maximum yield at optimum usage of inputs. These Intelligence is used widely in developed countries especially America, Australia, Canada,  and European countries etc. 

Where Artificial Intelligence is used in Agriculture:

1. Automated Farm Mechanization.
2. Identification of insect pest and disease outbreak in the field forecasting.
3. Management in crop quality especially soil quality, nutrition availability and fertilizer requirement of crops.
4. Climate Forecasting
5. Crop monitoring with Phenomics.

10 Modern Ways Of Artificial Intelligence Application:

1.  Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) is used for the crop monitring in all farm activities like irrigation, fertilization, general health of crops etc.
2. Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs),Genetic Algorithms(GAs) for yield predictions.
3. Hortibot are used for weeds removal with the help of Global positioning system(GPS).
4. Blue River Technology.
5. Harvest CROO robotics.
6. Driver less Tractors.
7. Machine Vision for Diagnosing Pest.
8. Machine Leaning for Diagnosing soil.
9. Hyper-spectral Imaging in phenomics.
10. 3D Laser-scanning in phenomics.  

5 Automated platforms for Digital Image Phenotyping (The Era Of Phenomics) under controlled environment

5 Automated platforms for Digital Image Phenotyping (The Era Of Phenomics)

1. RGB color Imaging for Plant morphological trait measuring methodology in phenomics like colour, texture etc.
2. Lidar for 3D image technology for the phenotyping of plants.
3. Chlorophyll florescence imaging to determine phenotype during photosynthesis.
4. Thermal imaging for the sensing of temperature through digital imaging.
5. Hyper-spectral Imaging for the measuring the nutrient uptake efficiency of plants through phenomics.

Digital Image Phenotyping in Plants

   Role and benefits of Digital Image Phenotyping

• Large area of plants can easily analyzed through drones for scanning of nutrients deficiency.

• Plants can easily analyzed the severity of disease through digital imaging.

• Digital cameras are used to calculate the quantitative characters by using various software like Matlab.   

• Time and labor cost become lower down through digital imaging.

• Huge number of plants can be analyzed for breeding programs.

• There are many instrument used in these days like digital cameras,  infrared sensor, drones etc.
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