Author(s)

Waltram Ravelombola^1,2*, Aurora Manley¹, Caroline Ruhl¹, Madeline Brown¹, Hanh Pham³, Shubham Malani², Waqas Ahmad¹

¹Texas A&M AgriLife Research, Vernon, TX, USA.
²Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Texas A&M University, TX, USA.
³Texas A&M AgriLife Research, Lubbock, TX, USA.

The use of the Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) has attracted scientific attention because of its potential to generate high-throughput phenotyping data. The application of UAS to guar phenotyping remains limited. Guar is multi-purpose legume species. India and Pakistan are the world’s top guar producers. The U.S. is the world guar largest market with an import value of >$1 billion annually. The objective of this study was to test the feasibility of UAS phenotyping of plant height and canopy width in guar. The UAS data were collected from a field plot of 10 guar accessions on July 7, 2021, and September 27, 2021. The study was organized in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with 3 blocks. A total of 23 Vegetation Indices (VIs) were computed. The analysis of variance showed significant genotypic effects on plant weight (p < 0.05) and canopy width (p < 0.05) during the first flight, and only on plant height (p < 0.05) during the second flight. Genotyping effects on most VIs were significant for both flights (p < 0.05). Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Red Edge Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDRE) were significantly and highly correlated with plant height (r = 0.74) and canopy width (r = 0.68). The results will be of interest in developing high throughput phenotyping approach for guar breeding.

Guar, Unmanned Aerial System, Vegetation Indices, Phenotyping, Plant Height, Canopy Width

Ravelombola, W. , Manley, A. , Ruhl, C. , Brown, M. , Pham, H. , Malani, S. and Ahmad, W. (2022) Initiation of Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Phenotyping of Plant Height and Canopy Width in Guar. American Journal of Plant Sciences, 13, 1427-1438. doi: 10.4236/ajps.2022.1312097.