Disease Incidence and Severity of Cercospora Leaf Spot in Sugar Beet Assessed by Multispectral Unmanned Aerial Images and Machine Learning.

Abstract

Disease incidence ( DI ) and metrics of disease severity are relevant parameters for decision making in plant protection and plant breeding. To develop automated and sensor-based routines, a sugar beet variety trial was inoculated with Cercospora beticola and monitored with a multispectral camera system mounted to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) over the vegetation period. A pipeline based on machine learning methods was established for image data analysis and extraction of disease-relevant parameters. Features based on the digital surface model, vegetation indices, shadow condition, and image resolution improved classification performance in comparison with using single multispectral channels in 12 and 6% of diseased and soil regions, respectively. With a postprocessing step, area-related parameters were computed after classification. Results of this pipeline also included extraction of DI and disease severity ( DS ) from UAV data. The calculated area under disease progress curve of DS was 2,810.4 to 7,058.8%.days for human visual scoring and 1,400.5 to 4,343.2%.days for UAV-based scoring. Moreover, a sharper differentiation of varieties compared with visual scoring was observed in area-related parameters such as area of complete foliage ( A F ), area of healthy foliage ( A H ), and mean area of lesion by unit of foliage ([Formula: see text]). These advantages provide the option to replace the laborious work of visual disease assessments in the field with a more precise, nondestructive assessment via multispectral data acquired by UAV flights.[Formula: see text] Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.

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