A review of imaging techniques for plant phenotyping

Abstract

Given the rapid development of plant genomic technologies, a lack of access to plant phenotyping capabilities limits our ability to dissect the genetics of quantitative traits. Effective, high-throughput phenotyping platforms have recently been developed to solve this problem. In high-throughput phenotyping platforms, a variety of imaging methodologies are being used to collect data for quantitative studies of complex traits related to the growth, yield and adaptation to biotic or abiotic stress (disease, insects, drought and salinity). These imaging techniques include visible imaging (machine vision), imaging spectroscopy (multispectral and hyperspectral remote sensing), thermal infrared imaging, fluorescence imaging, 3D imaging and tomographic imaging (MRT, PET and CT). This paper presents a brief review on these imaging techniques and their applications in plant phenotyping. The features used to apply these imaging techniques to plant phenotyping are described and discussed in this review.

Figure 1.

A scheme for plant phenotyping [31,34].

Figure 2.

The typical reflectance spectra of crop at different wavebands [92].

Figure 3.

A scheme for the multi-color fluorescence imaging system (a) and the chlorophyll fluorescence emission of green leaves as induced blue, red and green excitation light (b) [109].