Remote Sensing Technologies for In-Field Specialty Crop Field Phenotyping

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) based high-throughput sensing techniques are being used worldwide for quantification of phenotypic traits in field conditions. UAVs offer versatile sensor integration, rapid and simultaneous data acquisitions with desired high resolution data, and operational flexibility in diverse cropping systems. It also helps in acquiring data even under circumstances where access to field plots using ground platforms can be difficult (e.g. after irrigation/rain event, high biomass). This talk presents some of the on-going field phenotyping research using UAV-based sensing technology and pertinent comparisons to ground-reference data in breeding programs such as legumes and potatoes. Discussion will also focus on the general applications domain and futuristic advancements needed for wider adoption of UAV-based sensing in field phenotyping.