Field phenotyping system for the assessment of potato late blight resistance using RGB imagery from an unmanned aerial vehicle

• An unmanned aerial vehicle was used as a platform for field imaging.
• The developed image processing estimated the disease severity of potato late blight.
• We could capture the gradual spread of the disease over the field.
• The developed method provided the AUDPC as a phenotypic data.

In tests for field resistance of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) to late blight, crop scientists rate the disease severity exclusively using visual examinations of infections on the leaves. However, this visual assessment is generally time-consuming and quite subjective. The objective of this study was to develop a new estimation technique for disease severity in a field using RGB imagery from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). For the assessment of disease resistance of potatoes a test field was designed that consisted of 262 experimental plots on which various cultivars and lines were planted. From mid-July to mid-August in 2012, conventional visual assessment of disease severity was conducted while 11 aerial images of the field were obtained. The disease severity was estimated using an image processing protocol developed in this study. This estimation method was established so that the error of the severity estimated by image processing was minimal when compared with the visual assessment. Comparing the area under the disease progress curves (AUDPCs) calculated from the visual assessment and time series of images, the coefficient of determination was 0.77. A further experiment was conducted to validate the developed method. Eleven images of a field planted the following year were taken, and the resulting coefficient of determination was 0.73. The breeders concluded that these correlations were acceptable and that the UAV image acquisition and the disease severity estimation from the image were more efficient than the conventional visual assessments. Therefore, the developed technique based on aerial imagery allows high throughput, objective, and precise phenotyping with regard to field resistance to potato late blight.