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Agronomy
Special Issues
Smart Agriculture for Crop Phenotyping
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Smart Agriculture for Crop Phenotyping

A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Precision and Digital Agriculture".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 December 2025 | Viewed by 666

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Wenting Han

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, Northwest A&F University, Yangling 712100, China
Interests: remote sensing; precision agriculture; water use efficiency; smart irrigation; evapotranspiration
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Liyuan Zhang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Key Laboratory for Theory and Technology of Intelligent Agricultural Machinery and Equipment, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China
Interests: crop stress monitoring; UAV; phenotyping; image processing; machine learning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Current projections indicate that the world population will increase from 6.9 billion to 9.1 billion by 2050. In the context of climate change and finite agricultural resources, maintaining and enhancing crop yields has become an increasingly formidable challenge. Against this backdrop, crop phenotyping has emerged as a vital field in modern agricultural research, offering innovative solutions to address these pressing issues.

This Special Issue is dedicated to exploring the latest advancements in smart agriculture technologies for crop phenotyping. We aim to integrate interdisciplinary innovations across artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, hyperspectral imaging, drone-based remote sensing, and robotic automation. By enabling high-throughput, non-invasive phenotyping data collection and intelligent analytics, these cutting-edge technologies empower researchers to decode dynamic crop growth patterns, stress-resilience traits, and genotype-phenotype associations with unparalleled precision. This, in turn, accelerates crop breeding cycles and optimizes field management practices, offering a promising pathway to enhance agricultural productivity and sustainability in an era of global challenges.

We invite original scientific contributions that highlight the latest advancements in smart agriculture technologies for crop phenotyping. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Development of multi-scale phenotyping systems using drones and ground robots to capture comprehensive and high-resolution data.
  • Applications of machine and deep learning in extracting morphological, physiological, and biochemical traits under biotic and abiotic stresses, providing deeper insights into crop performance and resilience.
  • Integration of high-throughput phenotyping platforms with AI-powered decision-support tools for precision agriculture, streamlining workflows from data collection to actionable insights.
  • Techniques for plant mapping, feature extraction, and stress estimation using UAVs and other remote sensing data, enabling the real-time monitoring and assessment of crop health.
  • Case studies showcasing the application of smart phenotyping for resource optimization (water, fertilizers), pest and disease monitoring, and climate adaptation strategies, demonstrating tangible benefits for sustainable agriculture.

Prof. Dr. Wenting Han
Dr. Liyuan Zhang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • artificial intelligence
  • machine learning
  • deep learning
  • multi-scale phenotyping systems
  • prescription maps
  • site-specific crop management

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

28 pages, 3417 KB  
Article
Non-Destructive Estimation of Area and Greenness in Leaf and Seedling Scales: A Case Study in Cucumber
by Georgios Tsaniklidis, Theodora Makraki, Dimitrios Papadimitriou, Nikolaos Nikoloudakis, Amin Taheri-Garavand and Dimitrios Fanourakis
Agronomy 2025, 15(10), 2294; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy15102294 - 28 Sep 2025
Abstract
Leaf area (LA) and SPAD value (a proxy for chlorophyll content) are two key determinants of seedling quality. This study aimed to develop and validate approaches for the efficient retrieval of these features in order to facilitate both management and screening practices. In [...] Read more.
Leaf area (LA) and SPAD value (a proxy for chlorophyll content) are two key determinants of seedling quality. This study aimed to develop and validate approaches for the efficient retrieval of these features in order to facilitate both management and screening practices. In cucumber, different models were developed and tested for the accurate estimation of LA at the scale of the individual organ (cotyledon, leaf) by using its linear dimensions (length (L) and width (W)), and of the whole seedling by using the 2D image-extracted projected area (from three different angles: 0°, 45°, and 90°). At either scale, the SPAD value was computed by using image (90°)-based colorimetric features. The estimation of individual organ area was more accurate when using L alone, compared with W alone. By using the two dimensions and specific colorimetric features, the individual organ area (R2 ≥ 0.92) and SPAD value (R2 of 0.77) were accurately predicted. When considering a single view, the top one (90°) was associated with the highest accuracy in whole-seedling LA estimation, and the side view (0°) with the lowest (R2 of 0.88 and 0.73, respectively). Using any combination of two angles, the whole-seedling LA was accurately retrieved (R2 ≥ 0.88). When using colorimetric features, a poor estimation of the whole-seedling SPAD value was noted (R2 ≤ 0.43). The deployment of artificial neural networks (ANNs) further allowed the estimation of specific organ shape traits, and improved the accuracy of all the aforementioned predictions, including the whole-seedling SPAD value (R2 of 0.597). In conclusion, the findings of this study highlight that features readily retrieved from 2D images hold promising potential for improving screening routines within the nursery industry. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Smart Agriculture for Crop Phenotyping)
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