Remote Sensing and Machine Learning for Crop Phenotyping and Structural Analysis

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 February 2027 | Viewed by 254

Editors


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Guest Editor
Cultivation and Construction Site of National Key Laboratory for Crop Genetics and Physiology in Jiangsu Province, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou 225009, China
Interests: image recognition (computer vision technology) and intelligent monitoring of crop growth; crop growth simulation and its system design; UAV phenotypic monitoring and data analysis; the design and application of agricultural Internet of Things systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor Assistant
Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY 14623, USA
Interests: LiDAR; precision agriculture; structure from motion; machine learning; se-mantic analysis; segmentation and classification; biomass estimation; deep learning

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Accurate characterization of crop structural traits and field-scale phenotypes is essential for advancing precision agriculture and sustainable crop management. Recent developments in remote sensing technologies and machine learning methods enable the robust extraction of crop architectural features and spatial patterns across diverse agroecosystems. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, LiDAR, multispectral and hyperspectral imaging and other remote sensing platforms provide multi-modal datasets for high-throughput phenotyping and structural analysis.

This Special Issue focuses on scalable, learning-based approaches for crop phenotyping and structural analysis using remote sensing data. Contributions are welcome on methods for semantic segmentation, multi-modal data integration, data-efficient machine learning, multi-temporal analysis and structural trait extraction. Studies emphasizing generalizability, robustness and cross-environment applicability are particularly encouraged.

We invite original research articles, methodological studies and reviews that integrate machine learning, remote sensing and agronomic applications to advance our understanding of crop phenotyping and structural variability. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles-based data are highlighted as an important, but not exclusive, component of multi-source phenotyping systems.

Prof. Dr. Chengming Sun
Guest Editor 

Dr. Fei Zhang
Guest Editor Assistant

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Keywords

  • crop phenotyping
  • crop structural analysis
  • remote sensing
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles imagery
  • LiDAR
  • multi-modal data integration
  • machine learning
  • semantic segmentation
  • multi-temporal analysis
  • data-efficient methods

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

27 pages, 5977 KB  
Article
A Simplified Evaluation Model for Soybean Seedling Salt Tolerance Based on Core Biomass Traits Under Saline Pond Conditions
by Yixin Tian, Jinying Zhu, Fangjing Hua, Pengpeng Cao, Chunyan Li, Chunyu Wang, Guanxiong Zhu, Qi Gao and Fengju Gao
Agronomy 2026, 16(14), 1394; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy16141394 - 22 Jul 2026
Abstract
Salt stress severely restricts soybean seedling growth and yield formation, and the redundant indicators and low efficiency of conventional salt tolerance evaluation methods limit the large-scale screening and breeding of salt-tolerant soybean germplasms. In this study, we aimed to establish a simplified and [...] Read more.
Salt stress severely restricts soybean seedling growth and yield formation, and the redundant indicators and low efficiency of conventional salt tolerance evaluation methods limit the large-scale screening and breeding of salt-tolerant soybean germplasms. In this study, we aimed to establish a simplified and efficient salt tolerance evaluation system for soybean seedlings under saline pond conditions. We determined 16 phenotypic traits of 100 soybean germplasm resources under soil salt stress (0.3% soil salt content, EC 5.0 dS/m), calculated the salt tolerance coefficient (STC) of each trait, and comprehensively analyzed phenotypic variation, correlation, germplasm classification, and core evaluation indices via principal component analysis (PCA), K-means clustering, random forest model, SHAP interpretation, 10-fold nested cross-validation, and correlation network analysis. Biomass-related traits exhibited abundant phenotypic variation, with coefficients of variation ranging from 42.6% to 48.4%. Five principal components explained 82.90% of the total phenotypic variation and divided the accessions into four salt tolerance categories. Total fresh weight (TFW), stem fresh weight (SFW), and leaf fresh weight (LFW) were identified as the core indices, together accounting for over 93% of the total feature importance in the random forest model, whereas the remaining 13 traits each contributed less than 1.2%. The simplified three-index model showed strong consistency with the full 16-trait model (Pearson r > 0.970, AUC = 0.970) and achieved a screening accuracy of 90.0% under 10-fold nested cross-validation. Under the experimental conditions examined, fresh biomass accumulation emerged as the dominant phenotypic characteristic associated with seedling salt tolerance. This simplified evaluation framework may facilitate rapid preliminary screening of salt-tolerant soybean germplasms at the seedling stage, pending further validation across diverse environments and genetic backgrounds. Full article
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