Research Article | Open Access

Volume 2019 |Article ID 2591849 | https://doi.org/10.34133/2019/2591849

Easy MPE: Extraction of Quality Microplot Images for UAV-Based High-Throughput Field Phenotyping

Léa TreschiD ,^1,2 Yue Mu,³ Atsushi Itoh,⁴ Akito KagaiD ,⁵ Kazunori Taguchi,⁴ Masayuki Hirafuji,¹ Seishi NinomiyaiD ,^1,3 and Wei Guo iD ¹

¹International Field Phenomics Research Laboratory, Institute for Sustainable Agro-ecosystem Services, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
²Montpellier SupAgro, Montpellier, France
³Plant Phenomics Research Center, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China
⁴Memuro Upland Farming Research Station, Hokkaido Agricultural Research Center, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, Hokkaido, Japan
⁵Institute of Crop Science, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, Tsukuba City, Ibaraki, Japan

Abstract

Microplot extraction (PE) is a necessary image processing step in unmanned aerial vehicle- (UAV-) based research on breeding fields. At present, it is manually using ArcGIS, QGIS, or other GIS-based software, but achieving the desired accuracy is time-consuming. We therefore developed an intuitive, easy-to-use semiautomatic program for MPE called Easy MPE to enable researchers and others to access reliable plot data UAV images of whole fields under variable field conditions. The program uses four major steps: (1) binary segmentation, (2) microplot extraction, (3) production of .shp files to enable further file manipulation, and (4) projection of individual microplots generated from the orthomosaic back onto the raw aerial UAV images to preserve the image quality. Crop rows were successfully identified in all trial fields. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated by calculating the intersection-over-union (IOU) ratio between microplots determined manually and by Easy MPE: the average IOU (±SD) of all trials was 91% (±3).