Detecting Plant Stress Using Thermal and Optical Imagery From an Unoccupied Aerial Vehicle.

Soil and water salinization has global impact on the sustainability of agricultural production, affecting the health and condition of staple crops and reducing potential yields. Identifying or developing salt-tolerant varieties of commercial crops is a potential pathway to enhance food and water security and deliver on the global demand for an increase in food supplies. Our study focuses on a phenotyping experiment that was designed to establish the influence of salinity stress on a diversity panel of the wild tomato species, .

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Based Phenotyping Using Morphometric and Spectral Analysis Can Quantify Responses of Wild Tomato Plants to Salinity Stress.

With salt stress presenting a major threat to global food production, attention has turned to the identification and breeding of crop cultivars with improved salt tolerance. For instance, some accessions of wild species with higher salt tolerance than commercial varieties are being investigated for their potential to expand food production into marginal areas or to use brackish waters for irrigation. However, assessment of individual plant responses to salt stress in field trials is time-consuming, limiting, for example, longitudinal assessment of large numbers of plants.