PhenoCams for Field Phenotyping: Using Very High Temporal Resolution Digital Repeated Photography to Investigate Interactions of Growth, Phenology, and Harvest Traits

Understanding the interaction of plant growth with environmental conditions is crucial to increase the resilience of current cropping systems to a changing climate. Here, we investigate PhenoCams as a high-throughput approach for field phenotyping experiments to assess growth dynamics of many different genotypes simultaneously in high temporal (daily) resolution. First, we develop a method that extracts a daily phenological signal that is normalized for the different viewing geometries of the pixels within the images. Second, we investigate the extraction of the in season traits of early vigor, leaf area index (LAI), and senescence dynamic from images of a soybean (Glycine max) field phenotyping experiment and show that it is possible to rate early vigor, senescence dynamics, and track the LAI development between LAI 1 and 4.5. Third, we identify the start of green up, green peak, senescence peak, and end of senescence in the phenological signal. Fourth, we extract the timing of these points and show how this information can be used to assess the impact of phenology on harvest traits (yield, thousand kernel weight, and oil content). The results demonstrate that PhenoCams can track growth dynamics and fill the gap of high temporal monitoring in field phenotyping experiments.