A team at the Department of Plant Nutrition at the TUM School of Life Sciences is therefore researching how optical sensor technology, so-called "high-throughput phenotyping", can improve yields in agriculture. "We use ground-based sensor systems, drone and satellite data for this purpose," says Prof. Urs Schmidhalter, head of the Institute of Plant Nutrition. "The latest research results show: Important plant performance characteristics and physiological processes in field trials and crop cultivation can be recorded quickly and non-invasively in this way," adds Prof. Schmidhalter.
The data help to quickly and cost-effectively assess the yield performance of plants in very early selection cycles of breeding. Important physiological properties, such as the nitrogen efficiency and drought tolerance of the plants, can also be assessed in field trials and in breeding. Artificial intelligence makes it possible to process the huge amounts of data.
"In the future, this kind of data mining will not only become important in breeding, but already offers great potential in the sustainable cultivation of plants, which makes it possible to use less seed, pesticides and fertiliser," predicts Schmidhalter.
Further information:
- Detailed article about the research of Prof. Urs Schmidhalter in the Freisinger Tagblatt
- Hans-Eisenmann-Forum for Agricultural Sciences: As part of the HEF lecture series, Prof. Dr Urs Schmidhalter gave a lecture on 02.07.2020 about "Digital Nutrient Management - Challenges, Developments and Perspectives", click here for the recording of the digital lecture.
Publications:
Jin, X.; Zarco-Tejada, P.; Schmidhalter, U.; Reynolds, M.; Hawkesford, M.; Varshney, R.; Yang, T.; Nie, C.; Li, Z.; Ming, B.; Xiao, Y.; Xie, Y.; Li, S. (2020) High-throughput estimation of crop traits: A review of ground and aerial phenotyping platforms. 2020. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine. 0-0. 10.1109/mgrs.2020.2998816.
Hu, Y., Knapp, S., Schmidhalter, U. (2020) Advancing High-Throughput Phenotyping of Wheat in Early Selection Cycles. Remote Sensing. 12. 3. 574. 10.3390/rs12030574.
Prey, L.; Hu, Y.; Schmidhalter, U. (2020). High-Throughput Field Phenotyping Traits of Grain Yield Formation and Nitrogen Use Efficiency: Optimizing the Selection of Vegetation Indices and Growth Stages. Frontiers in Plant Science. 10. 10.3389/fpls.2019.01672.
Editing:
Susanne Neumann
TUM School of Life Sciences
Press and Public Relations
Scientific contact:
Prof. Dr. Urs Schmidhalter
Chair of Economics of Horticulture and Landscaping
Tel. +49 8161 71 3391
schmidhalter(at)tum.de