Capturing crop adaptation to abiotic stress using image-based technologies

Abstract

Farmers and breeders aim to improve crop responses to abiotic stresses and secure yield under adverse environmental conditions. To achieve this goal and select the most resilient genotypes, plant breeders and researchers rely on phenotyping to quantify crop responses to abiotic stress. Recent advances in imaging technologies allow researchers to collect physiological data non-destructively and throughout time, making it possible to dissect complex plant responses into quantifiable traits. The use of image-based technologies enables the quantification of crop responses to stress in both controlled environmental conditions and field trials. This paper summarizes phenotyping imaging technologies (RGB, multispectral and hyperspectral sensors, among others) that have been used to assess different abiotic stresses including salinity, drought and nitrogen deficiency, while discussing their advantages and drawbacks. We present a detailed review of traits involved in abiotic tolerance, which have been quantified by a range of imaging sensors under high-throughput phenotyping facilities or using unmanned aerial vehicles in the field. We also provide an up-to-date compilation of spectral tolerance indices and discuss the progress and challenges in machine learning, including supervised and unsupervised models as well as deep learning.

StressNet: a spatial-spectral-temporal deformable attention-based framework for water stress classification in maize

“…Further, this data helped Berni et al. (2009) ; Al-Tamimi et al. (2022) in quantifying various traits of water stress responses.…”

Noninvasive Abiotic Stress Phenotyping of Vascular Plant in Each Vegetative Organ View

“…To obtain thorough phenotypes while minimizing interference, noninvasive phenotyping is widely used, without requiring physical splitting or biochemical extraction as traditional invasive methods do. Noninvasive phenotyping also has the distinct advantage of being comparable and reproducible, with the potential to realize kinetic monitoring of the growth and development of the same organs without obvious and serious disturbance [ 7 – 9 ]. Noninvasive phenotyping can be achieved through optical sensing, utilizing optical waves (the light wave and type of electromagnetic radiation) to interact with the object and feedback spectral characteristics [ 10 , 11 ].…”

A Synthetic Review of Various Dimensions of Non-Destructive Plant Stress Phenotyping

“…Moreover, imaging is more intuitive to human vision. Therefore, 2D imaging is now the most widely used form of plant stress phenotyping [22][23][24]. Two-dimensional imaging comprises visible, multispectral, hyperspectral, IR, thermal-IR, and ChlF imaging [22,25,26].…”