Digital applications and artificial intelligence in agriculture toward next-generation plant phenotyping

In the upcoming years, global changes in agricultural and environmental systems will require innovative approaches in crop research to ensure more efficient use of natural resources and food security. Cutting-edge technologies for precision agriculture are fundamental to improve in a non-invasive manner, the efficiency of detection of environmental parameters, and to assess complex traits in plants with high accuracy. The application of sensing devices and the implementation of strategies of artificial intelligence for the acquisition and management of high-dimensional data will play a key role to address the needs of next-generation agriculture and boosting breeding in crops. To that end, closing the gap with the knowledge from the other 'omics' sciences is the primary objective to relieve the bottleneck that still hinders the potential of thousands of accessions existing for each crop. Although it is an emerging discipline, phenomics does not rely only on technological advances but embraces several other scientific fields including biology, statistics and bioinformatics. Therefore, establishing synergies among research groups and transnational efforts able to facilitate access to new computational methodologies and related information to the community, are needed. In this review, we illustrate the main concepts of plant phenotyping along with sensing devices and mechanisms underpinning imaging analysis in both controlled environments and open fields. We then describe the role of artificial intelligence and machine learning for data analysis and their implication for next-generation breeding, highlighting the ongoing efforts toward big-data management.

Automated summary

In the upcoming years, innovative approaches in crop research will be crucial for efficient use of natural resources and food security. Precision agriculture technologies, especially sensing devices and artificial intelligence, play a key role in detecting environmental parameters and assessing complex traits in plants. Establishing synergies among research groups and embracing knowledge from other 'omics' sciences are essential for advancing phenomics and overcoming bottlenecks in crop potential.