TraitDiscover: An automated high-throughput platform for multimodal plant phenotyping with real-time trait analysis

Abstract

Plant phenotyping is essential for elucidating genotype–environment interactions, yet conventional methods remain labor-intensive and low-throughput. TraitDiscover transcends these constraints by uniting multimodal sensing with tightly coupled hardware-software orchestration in a single, end-to-end phenotyping platform. Aligned with the ”Plant Phenotyping Trinity” framework, the system comprises a millimetre-accurate triaxial automation unit, a modular sensor array–RGB imaging, three-dimension laser scanner or LiDAR (3D), infrad (IR) thermal imaging, hyperspectral imaging (HSI), and photosynthesis (PS) imaging–and the dedicated software TraitNavigator suite into one cohesive system. A unified spatiotemporal synchronization mechanism enables robust time-series analysis and fusion of multisource phenotypic data across the entire crop growth period, while the DepthCropSeg algorithm and a night-time imaging module enhance trait extraction under complex conditions, providing G × E × P-ready, multimodal phenotypic datasets. Validation across soybean, maize, and rice trials demonstrated high sensitivity—detecting drought stress four days before visible symptoms, identifying glyphosate injury 24 hours ahead of manual scoring, and quantifying local adaption patterns across ecological gradients. While challenges remain in scaling to complex open-field conditions, TraitDiscover offers a scalable, data-driven approach to accelerate stress phenotyping and breeding decisions and is readily poised for deeper integration with AI to advance sustainable agriculture.

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