Plot Height Application
Proponents: Australian Plant Phenomics Facility
Wheat plot height pipeline for agriculture
Step 1: Data Capture
The Australian Plant Phenomics Facility (APPF) were interested in increasing accessibility to, and simplifying workflows of, automated wheat crop statistics to researchers, breeders and farmers. Focusing on metrics such as, absolute canopy height, yield estimates, and growth rates, the APPF wanted to create reusable and open source tools that would use photogrammetric data collected from drones to map these metrics.
Step 2: Photogrammetry
The imagery was processed through the ASDC’s online scalable structure from motion engine to build georeferenced 3D geometry and texture data. From this standard orthomosaic, DSM, and reality model outputs were produced.
Step 3: Analysis Tool Development
A wheat height assessment and mapping tool was built within the ADSC environment by automating the classification and interpolation of the ground elevation, and subtracting that from the entire surface model resulting in a map of absolute crop height. From this data a myriad of valuable yield and growth statistics are derived.
Step 4: Data Access & Visualisation
The automated wheat plot assessment tool is now available now in the ASDC data analysis tool library to all other users. By maintaining these best practice open science principals, the ASDC and the APPF have lowered the cost and knowledge barrier for farmers, breeders and researchers to take advantage of drone technology in their plot management.
The Contribution
The complexity of photogrammetry workflows is the number and complexity of algorithms, and variables within those algorithms that are available. The greatest value of the wheat plot assessment tool is to make the act of processing, configuring, tuning, and quality assurance easy for the user and otherwise ensure little human intervention.
