The application of flexible unmanned aerial vehicle remote sensing for field-based crop phenotyping: Current status and perspectives

Authors: YANG, GUIJUN - National Engineering Research Center For Information Technology In Agriculture; LIU, JIANGANG - National Engineering Research Center For Information Technology In Agriculture; LI, ZHENHONG - National Engineering Research Center For Information Technology In Agriculture; Huang, Yanbo; YU, HAIYANG - National Engineering Research Center For Information Technology In Agriculture; XU, BO - National Engineering Research Center For Information Technology In Agriculture; YANG, XIAODONG - National Engineering Research Center For Information Technology In Agriculture; ZHU, DONGMEI - National Engineering Research Center For Information Technology In Agriculture; ZHANG, XIAOYAN - National Engineering Research Center For Information Technology In Agriculture; ZHANG, RUYANG - National Engineering Research Center For Information Technology In Agriculture

Submitted to: Frontiers in Plant Science
Publication Type: Review Article
Publication Acceptance Date: 6/8/2017
Publication Date: 6/30/2017
Citation: Yang, G., Liu, J., Li, Z., Huang, Y., Yu, H., Xu, B., Yang, X., Zhu, D., Zhang, X., Zhang, R. 2017. The application of flexible unmanned aerial vehicle remote sensing for field-based crop phenotyping: Current status and perspectives. Frontiers in Plant Science. 8:1-26.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Phenotyping plays an important role in crop science research; the accurate and rapid acquisition of phenotypic information of plants or cells in different environments is helpful for exploring the inheritance and expression patterns of the genome to determine the association of genomic and phenotypic information to increase crop yield. Traditional methods for acquiring crop traits, such as plant height, leaf colour, leaf area index (LAI), chlorophyll content, biomass and yield, rely on manual sampling, which is time-consuming and laborious. Unmanned aerial vehicle remote sensing platforms (UAV-RSPs) equipped with different sensors have recently become important means for fast and non-destructive access to complex traits and have the advantages of flexible and convenient operation, on-demand access to data and high spatial resolution. UAV-RSPs are a powerful tool for studying phenomics and genomics. Based on a literature survey of crop phenotyping using UAV-RSPs in the Web of ScienceTM, the current status and perspectives on the application of UAVs for field-based phenotyping have been reviewed, including the development of UAV-RSPs, the methods and applications for analysing phenotypic information by UAV-RSP, and the deficiencies of crop phenotyping by UAV-RSP. This review provides theoretical and technical support to promote the application of UAV-RSPs for crop phenotyping.