Accurate 3D recording: Integrating ground-based LiDAR data and 3D segmentation network to extract 3D traits and analyze genetics in wheat populations

Abstract

This study suggests a novel extraction pipeline based on terrestrial laser scanning across multiple growth stages to address the current deficiency of three-dimensional (3D) phenotypic traits for wheat populations derived from 3D point clouds. This study presents 3D Wheat Point-seg Net (3D WP-seg Net), a novel 3D point cloud segmentation network that incorporates an SA-CrossAttention module to address the difficulties presented by complex structures, background noise, non-uniform point distributions, and scale variations in plot-level wheat point cloud data. Plot height, canopy area, and volume are examples of common phenotypic parameters that are successfully extracted using this technique. Additionally, two new phenotypic parameters: plot extension distance and lodging angle are suggested by fusing the centroid and slice-skeletonization algorithms. A software platform called 3D Trait Analysis was created to facilitate multi-sensor 3D data processing and trait extraction. A genome-wide association study (GWAS) was then conducted using the extracted population-level traits to find potential genes linked to these new phenotypes. While the segmentation accuracies of 3D WP-seg Net achieved 93.1%, 88.3%, and 92.5% under various sensor systems, the results showed a strong correlation between the predicted and measured plot heights (R 2 = 0.954). Furthermore, four candidate genes linked to extension distance were found on chromosomes 1A, 2A, and 4A, and five putative genes controlling plot lodging angle were found on chromosomes 2D, 3A, and 7A. The multi-stage 3D phenotyping and analysis framework for wheat populations established by this study improves the accuracy of point cloud segmentation and trait quantification while offering a new and efficient method for the genetic analysis of important population-level traits.

Plant phenotyping relevance

LiDAR点群の分割、3D形質抽出、検証、ソフトウェア基盤の開発が研究の中心であり、コムギの形態・倒伏関連形質を定量化しているため。

Code and data availability

The paper's data availability statement explicitly deposits the authors' source code (3D WP-seg Net segmentation pipeline and 3D Trait Analysis software), testing data, and supporting datasets in a public GitHub repository, directly supporting this paper's wheat 3D phenotyping and segmentation analysis.