Research Article | Open Access

Volume 2021 |Article ID 9840192 | https://doi.org/10.34133/2021/9840192

UAS-Based Plant Phenotyping for Research and Breeding Applications

Wei GuoiD ,¹ Matthew E. Carroll,² Arti Singh,² Tyson L. Swetnam,³ Nirav MerchantiD ,⁴ Soumik SarkariD ,⁵ Asheesh K. Singh iD ,² and Baskar Ganapathysubramanian iD ⁵

¹Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Japan
²Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA
³BIO5 Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA
⁴Data Science Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA
⁵Department of Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA

Abstract

UUnmanned aircraft system (UAS) is a particularly powerful tool for plant phenotyping, due to reasonable cost of procurement and deployment, ease and flexibility for control and operation, ability to reconfigure sensor payloads to diversify sensing, and the ability to seamlessly fit into a larger connected phenotyping network. These advantages have expanded the use of UAS-based plant phenotyping approach in research and breeding applications. This paper reviews the state of the art in the deployment, collection, curation, storage, and analysis of data from UAS-based phenotyping platforms. We discuss pressing technical challenges, identify future trends in UAS-based phenotyping that the plant research community should be aware of, and pinpoint key plant science and agronomic questions that can be resolved with the next generation of UAS-based imaging modalities and associated data analysis pipelines. This review provides a broad account of the state of the art in UAS-based phenotyping to reduce the barrier to entry to plant science practitioners interested in deploying this imaging modality for phenotyping in plant breeding and research areas.