Advances in automatic detection of tulip breaking virus (TBV) using machine vision*

Tulip breaking virus (TBV) causes severe economic losses in flower bulbs in the Netherlands. To prevent further spread by aphids, infected plants must be removed from the field as soon as possible. Until now screening is done by visual inspection in the field. As the availability of human experts is limited there is an urgent need for a rapid, automated and objective method of screening. Based on laboratory experiments, we developed a vision method for use in the open field. From 2009 - 2012 field trials were carried out and the techniques were tested and improved. First field trails were on single plant density where plants does not overlap in the images. In 2012 the experiment conducted a tulip field planted at production density of 100 and 125 plants per square meter, resulting in images with overlapping plants. The final score of our system in this production density experiment approached the scores obtained by the experienced crop experts.