Elucidating Sorghum Biomass, Nitrogen and Chlorophyll Contents With Spectral and Morphological Traits Derived From Unmanned Aircraft System

Authors

Jiating Li, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Yeyin Shi, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Arun-Narenthiran Veeranampalayam-Sivakumar, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Daniel P. Schachtman, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

10-2-2018

Citation

Frontiers in Plant Science | www.frontiersin.org October 2018 | Volume 9 | Article 1406 Page 1-12

Comments

Li J, Shi Y, Veeranampalayam-Sivakumar A-N and Schachtman DP (2018) Elucidating Sorghum Biomass, Nitrogen and Chlorophyll Contents With Spectral and Morphological Traits Derived From Unmanned Aircraft System. Front. Plant Sci. 9:1406. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2018.01406

Abstract

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) provide an efficient way to phenotype cropmorphology with spectral traits such as plant height, canopy cover and various vegetation indices (VIs) providing information to elucidate genotypic responses to the environment. In this study, we investigated the potential use of UAS-derived traits to elucidate biomass, nitrogen and chlorophyll content in sorghum under nitrogen stress treatments. A nitrogen stress trial located in Nebraska, USA, contained 24 different sorghum lines, 2 nitrogen treatments and 8 replications, for a total of 384 plots. Morphological and spectral traits including plant height, canopy cover and various VIs were derived from UAS flights with a true-color RGB camera and a 5-band multispectral camera at early, mid and late growth stages across the sorghum growing season in 2017. Simple and multiple regression models were investigated for sorghum biomass, nitrogen and chlorophyll content estimations using the derived morphological and spectral traits along with manual ground truthed measurements. Results showed that, the UAS-derived plant height was strongly correlated with manually measured plant height (r = 0.85); and the UAS-derived biomass using plant height, canopy cover and VIs had strong exponential correlations with the sampled biomass of fresh stalks and leaves (maximum r = 0.85) and the biomass of dry stalks and leaves (maximum r = 0.88). The UAS-derived VIs were moderately correlated with the laboratory measured leaf nitrogen content (r = 0.52) and the measured leaf chlorophyll content (r = 0.69) in each plot. The methods developed in this study will facilitate genetic improvement and agronomic studies that require assessment of stress responses in large-scale field trials.