Open source 3D phenotyping of chickpea plant architecture across plant development

Abstract

Abstract Background Being able to accurately assess the 3D architecture of plant canopies can allow us to better estimate plant productivity and improve our understanding of underlying plant processes. This is especially true if we can monitor these traits across plant development. Photogrammetry techniques, such as structure from motion, have been shown to provide accurate 3D reconstructions of monocot crop species such as wheat and rice, yet there has been little success reconstructing crop species with smaller leaves and more complex branching architectures, such as chickpea. Results In this work, we developed a low-cost 3D scanner and used an open-source data processing pipeline to assess the 3D structure of individual chickpea plants. The imaging system we developed consists of a user programmable turntable and three cameras that automatically captures 120 images of each plant and offloads these to a computer for processing. The capture process takes 5–10 min for each plant and the majority of the reconstruction process on a Windows PC is automated. Plant height and total plant surface area were validated against “ground truth” measurements, producing R 2 > 0.99 and a mean absolute percentage error Conclusions Our results show that it is possible to use low-cost photogrammetry techniques to accurately reconstruct individual chickpea plants, a crop with a complex architecture consisting of many small leaves and a highly branching structure. We hope that our use of open-source software and low-cost hardware will encourage others to use this promising technique for more architecturally complex species.

Plant phenotyping relevance

ヒヨコマメ個体の3D形態を取得する低コスト撮像システムとオープンソース解析パイプラインを開発し、草丈・表面積を基準値で検証しており、フェノタイピング手法が中心である。

Code and data availability

The authors deposited the paper's 3D point clouds and meshed chickpea models in an open-access Zenodo repository (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.4018242). Processing scripts are only included as article additional files, and the source images are available only on request from the corresponding author.